Jeff Miller

July 5, 2015

Guest Speaker

Gifted to Serve

Jeff Miller

July 5, 2015

Guest Speaker

Why Should I Serve?

Because God HAS DONE SO MUCH FOR ME . (Rom 12:1)

Because God WANTS ME TO GROW . (Rom 12:2)

Because God HAS GIFTED ME . (Rom 12:3-8)

God has gifted me with the ability/abilities to:

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

00:00-00:07
God, thank you so much for this opportunity I have to come before your people and proclaim your word, Lord.
00:07-00:08
What an awesome privilege.
00:08-00:11
Help me to take that very seriously this morning, Lord.
00:12-00:16
I pray that every single word that comes from my mouth would be from your Holy Spirit and not from me.
00:16-00:20
I pray you bring glory to yourself and impact everyone's lives in this room this morning.
00:21-00:22
God, we need your help.
00:23-00:25
In Jesus' name, amen.
00:27-00:29
This passage shows us why we should serve.
00:29-00:32
So ask yourselves this morning, why should I serve?
00:33-00:38
Well, first, this passage shows us that we should serve because God has done so much for me.
00:39-00:40
God has done so much for me.
00:41-00:49
Paul begins this passage by calling his readers to give all that they have to God in light of all that has been done for them through Jesus.
00:49-02:23
He says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God." So whenever you see a "therefore" in the Bible, you have to back up a couple of verses what was before the therefore. So before he commands his readers to do anything, Paul first points back to what God has done for them in the past. He spends the first 11 chapters of his letter to the Romans showing them their sinfulness and how Jesus saved them from the darkness of their sins. You know, God had done so much for them through the death, the resurrection of Jesus. He put all their sins and the punishment for those sins upon Christ. He set them free from the power of sin. He adopted them into his family and he promised that nothing could separate them from his love. In light of all this, Paul calls Christians to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice. You know in the Old Testament, animals were sacrificed upon the altar and killed to cover the sins of the people. And these small sacrifices pointed forward to the day when a greater sacrifice would come to once and for all take away the sins of God's people. Jesus came to this earth to be the ultimate sacrifice. So we don't have to offer God dead sacrificial animals anymore because Jesus took our sins and our punishment upon Himself.
02:25-02:31
As Christians, God still calls us to make a certain kind of sacrifice.
02:31-02:49
We're not called to offer dead animals to Him anymore, but our lives to Him as a living sacrifice. Christians are to present every part of their lives to God and to sacrifice their time, talents, and treasures for Him. This is the offering.
02:49-02:53
This is the sacrifice that is pleasing to our God.
02:56-03:36
You may translations call this our spiritual act of worship, but a better translation is actually reasonable act of worship. It makes sense that we would give everything to the One who gave us everything. It's only reasonable that we would sacrifice all that we have for the one who sacrificed everything for us. It's only reasonable. Now I want you to imagine a teenage father and his son right now. So the father has always provided for his son. He's taking care of him. He's shown him how to be a man of God. He spends a lot of time with his sons by with his son by taking him to movies, to baseball games, hockey games.
03:37-03:56
Every Saturday he takes him out to lunch and they have deep conversations about the Lord and about their lives. And this father has done so much for his son over the course of his life. He has blessed him in so many ways. And the father never really asked anything from his son except for one thing. He asked him that once or twice a week he would take care of the yard and do some yard work.
03:57-04:11
Seems pretty reasonable, right? It seems, yeah, after all that what the father has done for his son, it seems reasonable. He asked his son to make sure the weeds are pulled and the grass is mowed. Whenever the father tells his son to do this, his son He drags his feet. He complains.
04:13-04:17
So one day the father is trimming trees out in the front and he's like, you know what?
04:17-04:21
I think I'm gonna get my son to clean up these branches. So he goes in the house. He's calling for his son.
04:21-04:27
He can't find him anywhere. He looks at the basement. He looks at the family room, the kitchen, his son's room.
04:28-04:31
Nowhere. He's getting really confused and really frustrated. Where's my son? Where did he go?
04:33-04:37
So after about 10 minutes of searching he finds his son hiding under his desk in the office.
04:39-04:43
Because he knew that his father would ask him to do yard work and he didn't want to do any yard work.
04:45-04:48
So was it wrong for the son to do this? I want you to answer. Was it wrong for him to do this?
04:49-05:11
Yeah, because it was only reasonable that the son would do this small thing for his father who had done so much for him. It only made sense that the son would do yard work for his father who had sacrificed so much for him. For those of you who are wondering, I am the son in this story. Let's I'll justify myself after service if you want to talk about it.
05:12-05:16
So we laugh at this story, but we all do the same thing with God all the time, don't we?
05:18-05:23
God has done so much for us, and he calls us to serve him and sacrifice our lives for him.
05:24-05:25
We make excuses.
05:26-05:27
We complain.
05:28-05:29
We say we don't have time.
05:31-05:40
Listen, God has saved you from shame, guilt, a life of meaninglessness, and an eternity away from Him in hell.
05:41-05:45
It's only reasonable that you would give everything you have for Him.
05:46-05:51
So please, brothers and sisters, let's stop making excuses and failing to honor our God.
05:51-05:58
Let's present our entire lives to Him as a living sacrifice, every single day.
05:59-06:06
We should serve God with all that we have and all that He has given us because He has done so much for us.
06:08-06:09
So why should I serve?
06:10-06:12
First, because God has done so much for me.
06:12-06:14
Second, because God wants me to grow.
06:15-06:30
Paul continues by writing, "Do not be conformed to this world, "but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." You know, as Christians, we cannot and should not try to conform to the beliefs in the values of the culture around us.
06:30-06:40
Conforming to the world means looking and acting exactly like everyone around you, instead of living how God has called you to live in his word.
06:41-06:48
Sadly, so many people who call themselves Christians in this country look exactly like everyone else.
06:48-06:54
They just want to blend in with the world around them, and they don't want to stick out as different whatsoever.
06:55-07:11
These people who call themselves Christians and support things that God speaks against in his word, such as living together before marriage, sex before marriage, homosexuality, messed up views of gender roles, and the list goes on and on and on.
07:13-07:22
The most relevant example that I could think of regarding Christians conforming to the thoughts and values of this world is the transformation of Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn Jenner.
07:22-07:23
Has everybody heard about this?
07:24-07:27
You pretty much can't own a TV go on the internet without hearing about this, right?
07:28-07:33
So Bruce Jenner is an Olympic gold medalist who struggled with his identity for years.
07:33-07:36
He always felt like he should have been born a woman.
07:36-07:41
So after years and years, he finally decided he was gonna make that transformation and become a woman.
07:41-07:46
So he had a lot of surgeries done, he took a lot of medication to look like a woman.
07:47-07:57
I've had many people ask me my opinion on this matter, and I tell them that what Bruce/Kaitlyn is doing is wrong It's tinful and against God's Word.
07:57-08:01
It's completely against God's design for men and for women.
08:01-08:04
God created men to be men and for women to be women.
08:04-08:09
He didn't create us with an option as to what gender to identify ourselves with.
08:10-08:14
Whenever I tell people my biblical conviction about this, they say, "Taylor, that's so mean.
08:14-08:15
Don't you want Bruce?
08:15-08:21
Don't you want Kaitlyn to be happy?" My answer is yes, I do want him to be happy.
08:21-08:23
And I know this won't make him happy.
08:23-08:24
to make Him miserable.
08:25-08:27
I love Him and I want what's best for Him.
08:27-08:29
I know this isn't it.
08:30-08:38
No matter what He does to make Himself look like a woman, He's always going to be a man in the eyes of God no matter what He does.
08:39-08:44
I've heard so many people who call themselves Christians say, you know what, it's not a big deal.
08:44-08:46
If it makes Him happy, He should do it.
08:47-08:55
They want to fit in and conform to this world so badly that they ignore God says in His Word about men and women.
08:56-08:59
Or at the Supreme Court decision about gay marriage last week.
08:59-09:03
I was stunned by how many Christians in my life celebrated this on Facebook.
09:04-09:13
I'd see so many statuses filling out my newsfeed saying finally, love has won and all of you who disagree need to change because you're hateful and you're mean.
09:15-09:16
I was absolutely stunned.
09:17-09:25
You know, so many Christians want to look cool, hip, and relevant They loosen their grip on biblical standards and try to conform to this world.
09:26-09:30
They grab onto things that God speaks against in His Word.
09:31-09:47
But Paul says here that if we want to be true followers of Christ, who serve God with our entire lives, we must reject conforming to this world, and instead grow in our faith by being transformed by the renewal of our minds.
09:49-09:50
How do we renew our minds?
09:50-09:52
What are some ways that we can renew our minds?
09:52-09:53
Does anybody have anything?
09:55-09:56
Reading your Bible, right.
09:56-09:57
Anything else?
09:59-09:59
Praying, right.
10:00-10:06
So yeah, being in prayer every single day, going to church, these are ways you can renew your mind.
10:06-10:13
But the greatest way to renew your mind is reading and meditating upon the Word of God.
10:14-11:07
put, you will not be a living sacrifice and serve God the way you are supposed to if you do not spend time reading your Bible and allowing your mind to be cleansed, to be renewed by the Word of God. Life transformation only happens when we spend time in God's Word. I've never met a Christian who grew, matured, and became an awesome servant of God without spending hours and hours and hours within the pages of this book. It's just not possible. There are no shortcuts. We don't realize how brainwashed we get with the beliefs of this culture through TV, movies, social media. We need these beliefs to be removed from our minds and replaced with the teachings and values that God speaks about in this book.
11:09-13:03
Every couple months my wife Kate tells me that I had to clear out all the things from my closet in my drawers I don't wear anymore. She tells me, "Listen, we're gonna take everything, we're gonna put it in a bag, we're gonna take it to Goodwill because I'm sick of seeing it." And against my will I go through all my stuff and I take out all the shirts that don't fit me anymore or they just aren't in style anymore or maybe I have a lot of deodorant stains on them. Guys, you know what I'm talking about. I'll find stuff I haven't worn since sixth grade in my closet and I'll put it all in a bag and you know Kate magically makes it disappear somehow. So usually after this type of cleansing, Kate takes me to the mall or to Target so I can buy new clothes right and I'm always I always resist her when she tells me to do all this stuff but once I do it I'm really happy that I did it right I'm really happy that I got these new clothes because they fit me better they look better and I just feel better in general but before I can buy these clothes I have to clear out all the junk in the old clothes which fill my closet. You know, in a much greater way, we need to renew or clean out our minds by getting rid of all the junk which fills our minds so we can then replace these useless and worldly things with the truths of God's Word. We have to clear out our minds to make room for what God says. Paul promises in this passage that when we daily attempt to cleanse our minds, renew our minds, we will then be able to discern the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. Let me ask you, is Paul saying here that if we spend time in God's Word, in prayer, and in church, then God will show us our futures for our lives like a Magic 8-Ball? He'll show us who to marry, he'll show us what career path to choose, he'll show you everything you need to decide. Is that what he's saying here? He'll show you his individual will for your lives.
13:04-13:05
No, that's not what he's saying.
13:05-13:14
He's saying that if we renew our minds, then we will know how to live a life that is honoring and pleasing to our God.
13:15-13:20
We'll be able to discern what kind of life God wants us to lead.
13:20-13:27
A life of sacrifice where we use all of our gifts, all of our talents and abilities to serve Him and His church.
13:30-13:36
So, if you truly want to be a living sacrifice to God, spend time in your Bibles this week.
13:37-13:41
Make time this week to spend a significant amount of time in God's Word.
13:42-13:49
Maybe start the reading the Bible in a year plan, or take two or three books of the Bible that you'll study intensely throughout the summer.
13:49-13:51
Join one of the small groups here.
13:51-13:52
Join a Bible study.
13:53-13:58
Even if you are busy, I know most of us are busy, you have to make time for the Bible.
13:58-14:00
and you cannot afford to ignore it.
14:01-14:16
I want you all to discover your gifts and how God has called you to serve Him and His church, and this will not happen unless you remove the junk that fills your minds and replace it with the things of God.
14:17-14:21
We must renew our minds if we're going to serve God well.
14:23-14:24
So why should I serve?
14:24-14:26
First, because God has done so much for me.
14:27-14:29
Second, because God wants me to grow.
14:29-14:33
And finally, because God has gifted me.
14:34-14:35
God has gifted me.
14:36-14:43
So Paul opens this section by reminding us that we're called to sacrifice everything for Jesus in light of all that He has done for us.
14:43-14:47
He then moves forward by saying that we're called to live a life of service.
14:47-14:52
And to do this, we must reject the ways of this world and accept the things of God through His Word.
14:53-15:08
And Paul closes out this section saying that God has not left us unequipped in our mission to serve Him, but that we have all been gifted with different abilities and talents that are to be used to glorify Christ and to help other people.
15:10-15:38
Paul writes, "I say to everyone among you to not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." Paul calls each and every one of us in this room today through this passage to use our renewed minds, to use our cleansed minds to realistically evaluate how God has gifted each and every one of us as individuals.
15:39-15:51
God has gifted each of us as His children with a different measure or proportion of spiritual gifts and abilities that must be used so we can fulfill our specific role in the body of Christ.
15:53-16:00
We must evaluate ourselves soberly or a more modern way to say it would be realistically discover what these gifts are.
16:01-16:10
But Paul says we must not think too highly of ourselves which means that we must not think we're gifted at everything and we don't need anybody else.
16:12-16:17
Some people in this room, you may be living a very prideful life and you don't even know it.
16:18-16:24
Some of you in this room this morning may be thinking to yourself, here to harvest don't appreciate me. They don't understand all that I do here.
16:25-17:07
You know, I don't know what would happen to this church if I left. This whole church would fall apart. I don't know what would happen if I left. I can tell you what would happen if you left. The church would go on without you, right? You know, Jeff and all the members here would miss you. They would feel your loss and it might be difficult for a while, but someone else would step up to take your place. It wouldn't be like if you left that Jeff would just throw his hands up in the air saying, "Well, we had a good run until so-and-so left. I guess I'm just gonna go look for a ministry job in the wanads." No, that's not gonna happen. Even though you're important, even though God has gifted you, you must realize that you have limitations and that you need other people. You're not gifted at everything.
17:08-17:47
Some people need to hear that. But some of you have the exact opposite problem, which I have. You think way too lowly of yourself and you don't think God has you at all. You falsely believe that you have nothing to offer the church and you aren't good at anything. You always have pity parties for yourself. I'm an expert at this. I do this all the time. You may think you're being humble, but you're actually being very prideful and very sinful, just like the people who think way too highly of themselves. Because by believing you're not good at anything, you're calling God two things. You're first calling God a liar, because God God promises us in his word that he has gifted each and every one of us.
17:48-17:58
So you're making him a liar when you say, "God hasn't gifted me." Second, you're calling God a bad creator because you're saying that God made a mistake with you.
17:58-17:58
And you know what?
17:59-18:01
God doesn't make mistakes.
18:02-18:08
So according to Paul in this passage, it's not realistic to believe that God hasn't gifted you.
18:08-18:20
So if you can't realistically evaluate yourself because you have a bad view of yourself, you a bad self-image, please talk to Jeff, please talk to someone in your life who loves you and they can show you what spiritual gifts have been given to you.
18:21-18:25
Please don't walk out of here believing that God has left you giftless.
18:27-18:52
Paul goes on to say, "Whereas in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. You know, Paul was saying that each and every one of us has a certain part in the body of Christ. We have a specific function.
18:53-20:08
You know, the body wouldn't be able to work very well if every single part had the same function, right? In the same way, the body of Christ will not be effective or accomplish the mission of God to spread the gospel if Christians do not realize their specific place, their specific role in the body of Christ. There are no useless body parts and every single part serves an important function. You know, our pinky toes seem very important when everything's going well, but I've met people who've broken their pinky toe and their whole life is just thrown into chaos, right? Who's ever broken their pinky toe? Anybody? Yeah, your whole life has just changed, right? When the smallest part of the body isn't doing its job, the whole body suffers. When any one of us in the body of Christ chooses to not do their part, the whole church suffers. The whole church suffers. You may be able to live and function without certain parts of your body, but you won't be able to function to the best of your ability. You know, it's not ideal to live life without legs, but it's possible and many people do it every single day. I guarantee you These people want nothing more than to have the use of their fully functioning legs back.
20:10-20:14
With our physical bodies, we want every part working as they were intended to.
20:14-21:08
In a much greater way, God wants the body of Christ. He wants every single part working as it was intended to work. As I said before, the church will be able to function without certain members of the body helping, but it will not function as well as it could have with every single part working as it's supposed to. For Harvest Bible Chapel Pittsburgh North to function to the best of its ability every single one of you in this room needs to be serving this church and using their spiritual gifts to help this church. Christianity is not a spectator sport. Get off the bench and into the game. You maybe help out by ushering or being part of the hospitality or assimilation team. Help with the group that tears down and sets up. If you're If you're musically gifted, talk to Darren, the worship leader, and he'd be happy to help you plug you into the band up here.
21:08-21:11
Find a way to serve this church.
21:11-21:13
Find a function in the body of Christ.
21:16-21:24
Paul closes out this passage by laying out several spiritual gifts such as teaching, encouragement, generosity, leadership, and acts of mercy.
21:26-21:31
Paul also talks about other spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, 7-10, in 27 through 30.
21:33-21:35
Maybe you have the gift of encouragement.
21:35-21:39
You have the ability to say the right things at the right time when people are really struggling.
21:40-21:41
Maybe you have a servant's heart.
21:41-21:44
You love to serve others in tangible ways.
21:44-21:46
You love to give them gifts when people are going through a hard time.
21:46-21:49
You love to do acts of service for people who really need it.
21:51-21:53
Maybe you have the gift of discernment and wisdom.
21:53-21:55
You know when you're hearing false teaching.
21:55-21:56
You know when you're hearing a lie.
21:56-21:59
And you can point to the truth in any specific situation.
22:00-22:08
You're very wise, people come to you when they need an important life decision to be made because you can weigh out the consequences of certain decisions.
22:09-22:15
Maybe you have the gift of teaching and you really enjoy using this gift to help other people understand God's Word better.
22:16-22:20
Whatever it is, we all at least have one spiritual gift.
22:21-22:26
I can absolutely guarantee you that not one single person has every single spiritual gift.
22:27-22:28
It's just not possible.
22:28-22:29
No one has all of them.
22:30-22:36
No one can go through this passage and say, acts of mercy, got it, teaching, got it, faith, got it, oh wow, I'm on a roll, I got it, I got it, I got it.
22:36-22:37
It's just not possible.
22:39-22:43
Which means, even the most gifted person in the body of Christ needs other people.
22:45-22:49
So, I need you, and guess what, you need me.
22:49-22:54
We all need each other if we're going to accomplish the mission that God has given us.
22:55-22:59
So please, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.
23:01-23:08
This will lead to you being very prideful, very arrogant, rude to other people, and you'll ultimately become very alone.
23:09-23:14
Don't think too lowly of yourself and don't trick yourself into believing that God hasn't gifted you.
23:15-23:21
Spend time within the passages that I have mentioned and evaluate yourself so you can discover your spiritual gifts.
23:23-23:40
As you've all noticed, there is a section at the bottom of your outline that says, "God has gifted me with the ability/abilities to blank." And in this blank, I want you to write out the gift that God has entrusted to you.
23:40-23:43
And please keep this outline with you throughout the next couple weeks.
23:43-23:44
Guys, put it in your cars.
23:45-23:46
Ladies, put it in your purse.
23:46-24:58
Tape it up to your mirror at home so you can see it every single day and remember how you can serve the church. I don't want to see any blank outlines this morning. If I see you walking around with a blank outline, I'm going to grab you. I'm going to help you fill this out. If you need prayer in a certain area of your life, please come to the front during the last song. Our elders and members of our prayer team would love to pray over you. And if you're having a difficult time figuring out what your gift is, please talk to myself, talk to Jeff or one of the elders after the service. Jeff and the elders here would love nothing more than to come alongside you and help you figure out what your spiritual is. Please, as children of God, do not insult your father by believing that you have nothing to fill this blank with. God has given you something to fill in this blank with. God doesn't make mistakes. He doesn't make junk. He created you with a certain purpose and a certain gift to use to glorify Him and help other people. God has called all of us in this room to serve him, to serve the church and unbelievers around us. He has equipped us to fulfill this mission.
25:01-25:09
God, I thank you so much for what you've done here in this room today. I pray that every single person in this room would recognize how you have gifted them, Lord.
25:10-25:15
I pray that no one would walk out of this church today believing that they have nothing to offer the body of Christ.
25:16-25:22
I pray that people in this room wouldn't think too highly of themselves and they also wouldn't think too lowly of themselves.
25:24-25:39
God, you've called us in your word to be a living sacrifice, to offer everything that we have for you because you've done so much for us, because you want us to grow, because you have gifted us.
25:41-25:47
God help us to renew our minds this week by being in your word, being in prayer, being around other believers.
25:48-25:53
God help us to remove the things from our minds that are worldly and help us to replace them with the things of God.
25:54-25:56
God, we so desperately, desperately need you.
25:58-26:03
Help us to figure out how you've called us to serve the church so we can glorify you and help other people.
26:04-26:07
We love you and we thank you for all that you do for us.
26:07-26:09
In Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Romans 12:1-8

Do you see examples of conforming to the world in your own life? How can you fight against these things and work to renew your mind?
Which do you struggle with more: thinking too highly of yourself or thinking far too lowly of yourself? Why are both of these harmful and destructive?
What spiritual gifts has God given to you? How can you use those gifts to serve at Harvest and help others around you?

Breakout Questions:

Pray for one another and the development of each person's spiritual gifts.

Jeff Miller

May 17, 2015

Guest Speaker

Deadly Disobedience

Jeff Miller

May 17, 2015

Guest Speaker

Five Lessons of Deadly Disobedience:

Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10:1-2) -

Achan (Joshua 7:19-26) -

Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:6) -

Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) -

Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) -

Without Severe Consequences...

DISOBEDIENCE would appear profitable.

The Holy Spirit would appear to have been DECEIVED .

God would appear to tolerate hypocrisy and DEFEAT / DECEPTION .

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

00:01-00:05
For those of you who have never been here, you're probably wondering who I am.
00:06-00:07
I'm not the usual sermon deliverer.
00:08-00:09
I'm a pinch hitter this morning.
00:10-00:23
As we said in the prayer, Jeff is at Pittsburgh East, the Harvest Bible Chapel at Pittsburgh East this morning, and he is preaching there as their preacher, Jeremiah Canfield, is out of town today.
00:23-00:35
So, my name is Jay Naur, and I'm one of the elders here, and I work for the University Medical Center, that big ugly building downtown that says UPMC on it.
00:36-00:48
But I'm a systems analyst there for the Information Services Division. That's what I am. What I am not is a Bible scholar. I am not a Bible scholar. I never went to Bible college.
00:48-01:27
I went to Westminster College, which is somewhat church-related. My only credential to be up here is that I'm a guy who loves God and I constantly am amazed at what he has done for me and what he's done for us. Let's just pray for a minute. Lord I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart will be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen. Hey, have you heard about the war that's going on?
01:29-01:30
It's going on now.
01:31-01:39
It's more destructive than World War I. It's more insidious and evil than World War II.
01:40-01:50
It's more lengthy than the Hundred Years War. It causes more More confusion and unrest than the Vietnam War.
01:51-01:55
It's more pervasive globally than the war on poverty.
01:58-02:02
It's scarier and it creates more panic than the war of the worlds.
02:02-02:03
Anybody remember that?
02:05-02:06
1938, way to go Paul.
02:08-02:13
Yeah, Orson Welles, that radio program that just freaked everybody out for a while.
02:14-02:17
This war that I'm talking about rages every single day.
02:18-02:21
And since man has walked on the earth it's been raging.
02:21-02:25
It's claimed more casualties than all wars put together.
02:27-02:30
And yet, it receives very little press coverage.
02:31-02:35
In fact, it is hardly ever talked about in normal conversation.
02:36-02:37
It's like a secret.
02:40-02:45
Its casualties are the most precious things that God ever created, souls.
02:46-02:48
They're more valuable even than lives.
02:49-02:50
What am I talking about?
02:52-02:53
Yes, my man Bob.
02:54-02:57
Yeah, I'm talking about spiritual war.
02:57-02:58
It's always raging.
03:00-03:01
Just a word about war.
03:03-03:09
Since the 1960s in America, lots of ideas about war being itself an evil.
03:10-03:16
It used to be the conventional idea about war was that it was necessary because of evil.
03:17-03:20
The idea was that evil must be defeated and eradicated.
03:21-03:25
Now it's tolerated in our society and war itself is the evil.
03:27-03:38
This spiritual war is actually the definitive daily, hourly, minutely fight for not our mere lives, but our souls.
03:39-03:46
This is the fight that Satan doesn't want us to even think about, let alone talk about, let alone fight against.
03:47-03:50
This is a battle that must be fought on an individual level.
03:52-03:57
is achieved by doing the right thing all the time. It's simple.
03:59-04:03
We do the right thing and good wins and we rejoice.
04:03-04:06
We do the wrong thing and evil triumphs.
04:08-04:37
But it's not easy. Why? Because we're so stupid. Sorry that offended somebody but we are. It's just so stupid. We fall and fail over and over and over again to the same root temptation. The same attributes that caused Adam and Eve to sin way back in the Garden of Eden trip us up all the time every day. Pride, selfishness, C.S.
04:37-04:55
Lewis said, I think he said that selfishness was the was the first root cause of sin and other people have said pride is. Pride and selfishness is the intertwined double-headed monster. It's Satan's best tool. It's the greatest of the enemy's weapons.
04:57-05:05
He gets you to think what you want is more important than what God wants. And you know what that sounds like on a human level?
05:05-05:12
It sounds like this, "I want to do what I want to do." What it sounds like. His best tool.
05:13-05:34
Number one cause of road rage. And Satan's sitting there, he's somewhere, he's howling with pleasure at even these little victories he gets. Okay, well it's simple just to find out what is the right thing and obey. But we don't all of time. And by the way, God demands it.
05:34-05:35
Did you know that?
05:35-05:36
He demands it.
05:37-05:51
He requires all of us to obey 100% of the time. If we fail and sin even one time, we are guilty of the punishment that God set up.
05:51-06:28
We can't be with God if we sin, because his nature is sinlessness we are separated because of sin from God so question again while you get a drink what is this punishment hey open your Bibles Romans after six I mean you probably know it already verse 23 What's the punishment? Yeah, death. Death is the punishment. Seems pretty severe, doesn't it?
06:29-06:32
Is that really true? Sometimes I just, you know, I just do a little sin.
06:33-06:40
Just a little sin. Steal a pencil from work. Steal, I don't know, lie, steal, and cheat.
06:41-06:49
I actually will lie, steal, or cheat. But on a small level, is that really deserving of death? Really?
06:50-07:09
Let's look at a few of these examples. Now, in your Bibles, on those papers, there's a bunch of names. The first couple is Nadab and Abihu. Please take your pen or pencil and write this verse next to it.
07:09-07:37
Leviticus 10 1 through 2. Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them, and added incense. And they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. Okay, it just kind of told you there who Nadab and Abihu were. These two guys are sons of Aaron, okay, the brother of Moses.
07:38-07:42
What Priests, that's right, they were priests.
07:43-07:49
These are not just your average Joe that's wearing jeans and has a stink bug on his leg.
07:50-07:53
So these guys were kind of important in Israel.
07:55-07:58
To talk about the first verse when it says "censors", what is that?
07:59-08:00
They took their censors.
08:01-08:02
Does anybody know what that is?
08:03-08:04
Anybody know what a censor is?
08:05-08:05
Say no.
08:06-08:15
Yeah, it's a container, it's a vessel that has hot coals in it, and they dump incense in them, and they're called censers, okay?
08:15-08:25
So they took these censers and they put fire in them, they put hot coals in them, they added incense, and they offered this fire before the Lord, contrary to His command.
08:27-08:29
Then in verse 2, here it is.
08:30-08:31
What was the question again?
08:32-08:37
The question was, is the punishment for disobedience really sin?
08:38-08:38
Okay?
08:39-08:40
That's the question.
08:40-08:42
Now, you can guess in verse 2.
08:42-08:48
So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.
08:49-08:51
Disobedience, instant death.
08:52-08:53
They were dead immediately.
08:54-08:57
So yeah, how does that make you feel?
08:58-09:01
I'll give you a little fuzzy, a warm feeling inside.
09:02-09:06
How many people have seen the movie "The Patriot"?
09:07-09:13
Now, in "The Patriot", this is the movie with Mel Gibson, and he had a son.
09:13-09:25
And there was a colonel in the British Army that came to their house, captured his son, his oldest son, Gabriel, which was played by Heath Ledger.
09:26-09:37
Now, they were taking him away, and the second oldest son said, "Dad, aren't you going to do anything?" And dad was like, "Cool it, cool it.
09:37-09:39
I'm generating a plan, OK?
09:40-09:47
Working on it." Kind of gave him that look because he couldn't say that to him, but I don't think the son understood because he ran after him.
09:48-09:58
And this colonel, Colonel Tavington or something like that, sitting on his horse, takes his long pistol out fills the guy's chest with a metal ball.
09:59-10:03
This little 15-year-old boy collapsed and died right in front of his family.
10:05-10:10
Thus, in my mind, I know a lot of people in this congregation love superheroes and stuff.
10:11-10:14
I don't, I just love heroes, human heroes.
10:15-10:24
But what happened after that was that the father went after and got his eldest son back.
10:24-10:29
And what that scene created was, in my mind, the greatest bad guy.
10:30-10:33
One of the greatest bad guys in history.
10:34-10:40
And here's why. I think it was a little later in the movie, maybe it was a lot later in the movie, they meet up again.
10:40-10:43
Colonel Tavington and the father meet up again.
10:43-10:50
He says to the father, Mel Gibson, he says, "Oh, I remember you and that stupid little boy.
10:50-10:52
The guy that he shot and killed.
10:53-10:54
calls him stupid.
10:55-11:16
Oh man, as a father, I just went nuts inside. I mean, this is a bad guy. This is a real bad guy. At the end of the movie, what happens? Mel Gibson kills the guy. He tells him, he's gonna, I'm gonna kill you very calmly. He says, I'm gonna kill you. Sooner or later, very soon, I'm gonna kill you.
11:16-11:17
And he does it.
11:17-11:26
And at the end, you know, the Americans win the battle and stuff like that, and What did that leave you with inside?
11:26-11:28
What kind of feeling that leave you with? Good feeling?
11:29-11:43
I mean, some people are honest and going, "Yeah, yeah, it kind of made me feel good." Why doesn't this make you feel good inside? Let's read another one. Akhan, okay, a little background.
11:45-11:54
What happened with Nadab and Abihu, they were actually not long out of slavery and they were were at camped, the tent of meeting by Mount Sinai.
11:55-12:03
Achan, this incident occurred as Joshua was now leading Israel to the Promised Land.
12:04-12:09
And they had just plundered, they had just defeated Jericho and they had plunder.
12:09-12:16
And what God told them to do with the plunder was keep it in Israel, keep it in the church.
12:17-12:24
So, by the way, next to Achan's name, Joshua 7, verse 25.
12:25-12:27
I'll just give you a quick synopsis of what happens.
12:27-12:42
What happens is that Achan steals some of the plunder for himself, and he keeps it, and he buries it somewhere, and the Lord reveals this to Joshua.
12:42-12:47
They find out that Achan, he's basically done wrong.
12:48-13:19
done what the Lord had not commanded and I'll start with verse 19 because then Joshua said to Ahan, "My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give him the praise. Tell me what you have done and do not hide it from me." Now these guys they were just celebrating their victory over Jericho so everybody's energized or in a good mood and then this happens.
13:19-13:26
Ahkan replied, "It is true. I've sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done.
13:27-13:53
When I saw the plunder, a beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, I coveted them and I took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent with the silver underneath. So Joshua sent some guys, some messengers, and they ran to the tent and there it was, hidden in his tent with the silver underneath.
13:53-14:28
They took the things from the tent, brought them to Joshua and all the Israelites and spread them out before the Lord. Then Joshua together with all Israel took Ahchan, the son of Zerah, silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons, his daughters, his cattle, his donkeys, and sheep, his tent, everything that he had to the valley of Achor. Joshua said, "Why have you brought this trouble on us by your disobedience?
14:30-14:37
The Lord will bring trouble on you today." Then all Israel stoned him, and after After they had stoned the rest, they burned them.
14:39-14:43
Over Akan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day.
14:44-14:46
Then the Lord turned from His fierce anger.
14:47-14:55
Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Akor ever since." Now I don't know about you, but I read this.
14:56-15:08
I didn't really have that same feeling that I had when I watched The Patriot or saw any the numerous scenes in Lord of the Rings where good prevailed over evil.
15:09-15:11
We don't have that same feeling.
15:11-15:17
However, there's a parallel there because good did win out.
15:18-15:20
God's commands are good.
15:22-15:25
You break God's commands, you will die.
15:26-15:27
That's simple.
15:28-15:30
You don't have to like it, it's just simple.
15:31-15:32
But it's not easy.
15:32-15:34
Let's look at Samuel, this is a short one.
15:34-15:39
2 Samuel 6, this is Uzzah.
15:40-15:44
Uzzah, look at chapter six of 2 Samuel, verse six.
15:46-15:57
Now, the background to this is that David is bringing the ark to Jerusalem, right after defeating their hated enemy, the Philistines.
15:57-15:58
Okay, they actually defeated them twice.
15:59-16:01
Okay, so they're rejoicing and they're having a great time.
16:02-16:16
rejoicing in the Lord because the Lord was with them. Now, verse 6 says, "When they came to the threshing floor of Nacchan, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God." What is the ark of God?
16:19-17:02
It actually symbolizes God's earthly throne. It's like God's lordship is in the ark. And David so wanted this to be in Jerusalem because he wanted to show the world that he wasn't the end-all, okay, he wasn't the greatest leader, but God was. That he submitted to God. Very important to him to have that Ark of God in Jerusalem, okay. So Uzzah reached out and took hold of the Ark of God because the oxen had stumbled and And then the Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act.
17:02-17:04
See, no one's supposed to touch the ark of God.
17:05-17:06
It's the rule.
17:08-17:10
That's God's mighty just rule.
17:11-17:17
Therefore, God struck him down and he died there beneath or beside the ark of God.
17:17-17:18
Instant death.
17:19-17:22
Disobedience, deadly.
17:23-17:27
Now, I don't have a warm fuzzy over that, but it's God's law.
17:28-17:29
We live under it.
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We have to abide by it.
17:32-17:33
We have to be obedient to it.
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Because as Jeff often says, "He is God.
17:40-17:43
We are not." Let's look at one more.
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This is in Acts, chapter 5.
17:47-18:02
If you have been watching the AD, I guess it's a mini-series on TV, the story of Ananias and Sapphira was on a couple of weeks ago and it showed in graphic detail what happened in that scene.
18:03-18:07
So write in your books Acts 5, 1 through 11.
18:09-18:18
Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.
18:19-18:27
With his wife's full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.
18:28-19:10
Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is this that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money that you received for the land. Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God." When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. Instantaneous death at disobedience. Now great fear seized all who had heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his and carried him out and buried him.
19:11-19:11
They're not done.
19:12-19:15
Three hours later, his wife came in not knowing what had happened.
19:16-19:26
Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price "you and Ananias got for the land?" She said, "Yes, that is the price." Peter said to her, "How could you agree "to test the spirit of the Lord?
19:26-19:38
"Look, the men who buried your husband are at the door, "and they will carry you out also." And at that moment, she fell down at his feet and died, and they carried him out and they buried him.
19:38-19:41
Great fear seized the whole church.
19:42-19:45
Instantaneous judgment, death.
19:45-19:46
That's what we deserve.
19:48-19:50
That's what all of us deserve.
19:50-19:54
Really, instantaneous death, unless you've not sinned.
19:55-19:56
No, I have.
19:57-19:57
I should be dead.
19:59-20:00
I'm not.
20:01-20:03
Man, God is good.
20:04-20:44
I guess this fits in with what Jeff's talking about a little bit. God is so good. I should be dead. You should be dead because you've all sinned. Now in these four examples there has been a pattern. I don't know if you've seen it, but God is actually making an example of the events. I don't know if you've, I don't know how many teachers we have in here, but I studied to be a teacher way back a a hundred years ago and when I was in college, they trained us to start out with discipline kind of harshly.
20:45-20:49
Then you can ease up if you need to, but start harsh.
20:50-20:52
My professor told me start mean.
20:53-20:53
Start out mean.
20:54-20:56
He had to tell me that because I was not mean.
20:56-21:07
But it's kind of like the children or the students have to know that the law is serious and that it means something, that it has consequences.
21:08-21:15
In each of these last four examples, each time a new era or a new community was instituted.
21:15-21:22
And each time they needed to be aware that they existed for God and not vice versa.
21:24-21:30
See, God is dead serious about sin and disobedience and they need to be shown.
21:32-21:37
Now the fifth example is Laodicea.
21:37-21:42
That is not a person, it is a church and it's Revelation chapter 3.
21:42-21:48
Write that in your little paper so you're good to go back and read the story so you get the full context.
21:48-21:50
I don't have time to do that with all these.
21:51-22:08
So, Revelation 3, "To the church in Laodicea, to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write, these are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the rulers of God's creation." They're the ruler of God's creation.
22:08-22:11
"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.
22:12-22:20
I wish you were either one or the other." So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I'm about to spit you out of my mouth.
22:20-22:24
That's verse 14 through 16.
22:26-22:27
That's a little different.
22:28-22:29
That is an amazing thing.
22:30-22:34
He would rather you be cold toward him than lukewarm.
22:34-22:39
Lukewarm is worse than saying, "God, I reject you.
22:39-22:56
Right outright." Someone that comes to church, puts on a show, puts on a good face, puts on a facade for for everyone. That, the lukewarm person that comes to church, God doesn't want anything to do with that. In fact, he's going to reject that person, spit you out of mouth.
22:56-22:57
That's like vomit.
22:58-23:07
He doesn't want it. Hates the taste of you if you're a lukewarm Christian. He would love you to be hot, you know, on fire, on fire for God.
23:07-23:20
And as you're on fire for God, you want to be obedient. And that's why, because then when you're obedient, you're right with God, your relationship, Your one-on-one personal relationship with God is right there.
23:20-23:21
It's good.
23:22-23:29
The problem is that there needs to be severe consequences to this disobedience.
23:30-23:35
I think on your paper, there's a little couple sentences there, right in this.
23:36-23:41
Disobedience would appear profitable if there weren't severe consequences.
23:42-23:44
Death is almost as severe as you can get.
23:45-23:54
The only thing I can think of that would be more severe than death would be your soul to go to hell, because there's nothing you can do.
23:54-23:55
You're going to suffer forever.
23:56-23:58
So disobedience would appear profitable.
23:58-24:02
Think about the long-range implications if God let that go.
24:03-24:05
So he had to set an example.
24:06-24:11
Some of you parents, it might be a good thing to do with your little kids.
24:12-24:16
an example up right away so they know right away what the law is and that there are consequences.
24:17-25:00
The second sentence on your outline says, "The Holy Spirit could appear to have been deceived." That can't happen. The Holy Spirit can't be deceived. It would appear that way to people in these situations. So if they think that it's going to be, you know, the Holy Spirit isn't, and if the Holy Spirit can be deceived, they're going to try it again and again and again. And the third sentence on your paper is that it makes it appear that God will tolerate hypocrisy and deception, which is completely against his nature. He can't abide in the same area with the deceiver, with sin. He has no sin.
25:02-25:07
It's not in his nature. So severe consequences had to occur.
25:08-25:25
Once this all came together in my mind, some of these situations like Uzzah and Akhan, where there was instantaneous death, it kind of made sense to me, because I wasn't in that camp.
25:25-25:31
I had that feeling that maybe that was a little too harsh, God.
25:31-25:34
I used to think that way back when.
25:35-25:41
In this spiritual war that we're all involved in, we talked about Satan's greatest weapon.
25:41-25:43
What was Satan's greatest weapon?
25:45-25:48
He gets us to be proud, he gets us to be selfish.
25:49-25:50
It's his greatest weapon.
25:50-25:52
Then he can just play with us.
25:52-25:53
He has a great time.
25:54-25:56
But our greatest weapon is this book.
25:57-25:58
Our greatest weapon is this Bible.
25:59-26:04
We learn truth from it, and truth transforms our minds as we learn.
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You know, I'd be dead if it wasn't for this Bible.
26:10-26:11
I love this Bible.
26:13-26:18
I'm actually confectionate toward it, because it's like if I kiss this, I kiss God.
26:18-26:24
And I would love to have that kind of relationship, a one-on-one love relationship with God where I could kiss Him.
26:24-26:25
I can't do that.
26:26-26:28
I wish I could, because I'd really like to.
26:29-26:30
I really appreciate what he's done for me.
26:31-26:40
He provides the way, he provides the weapons for each of us in this battle to transform our disobedience into obedience.
26:41-26:46
It takes work, and if we do it, we will have great celebrations in heaven.
26:48-27:03
And we can have a church kind of like is mentioned in Acts chapter 4, verse 32 through the end of the chapter. It says, "All the believers were in one heart and one mind." Right there.
27:04-27:19
That is fantastic. How many groups of believers are in one mind and one heart? I'll be honest with you, I've not been in many churches like this one. This one is the closest that I've ever been involved with.
27:19-28:27
I really mean that. It's amazing to me, and I love it. "All believers were in one heart and one mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them. You don't deserve it, but God gives you favor, and it's called grace. There were no needy persons among them. That's pretty amazing, too. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them brought the money from the sales and put it at the Apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone as he had need pretty amazing something like that happened in our church real recently this very example was followed that is amazing Verse 36, "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas," remember this guy, hung around with Paul?
28:28-28:35
"Barnabas means," it says right here in your Bible, "it means the son of encouragement." I know Jeff would love it if you'd be a Barnabas for him.
28:37-28:44
"Barnabas sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet." That's an incredible church.
28:46-28:47
So, how do you become obedient?
28:47-28:49
How can we build a church like that?
28:51-28:52
This is how.
28:53-28:53
Simple.
28:54-28:56
It's not easy, but simple.
28:56-28:57
Get into your Bible.
28:58-29:00
Search for God inside your Bible.
29:01-29:03
He wants to develop a relationship with you.
29:04-29:06
Become obedient to Him.
29:07-29:09
And I say, God is good.
29:10-29:10
Amen.
29:10-29:11
Let's pray.
29:12-29:16
Father God, I thank you for your Word, first of all.
29:16-29:21
I thank you for the church that we are sitting in right now in this school.
29:22-29:24
It doesn't matter that it's not in a building called a church.
29:25-29:26
I love that.
29:26-29:27
We can meet anywhere.
29:27-29:29
We can talk to you at any time.
29:30-29:31
I am so grateful to that.
29:32-29:35
But Father, I am disobedient at times.
29:35-29:36
We all are.
29:36-29:48
Father, we pray, hopefully as a group, we pray that we will learn some of the skills that we need to become more obedient, less disobedient.
29:48-29:56
Father, we know that the wages of sin or death is death, but Lord, you promise us eternal life.
29:56-29:59
That's your gift, as it says in Romans 6.23.
30:00-30:12
Lord, I thank you just for being the kind of God that loves us and wants to have a relationship with it, not some rock, not some stone that really doesn't interact with us.
30:13-30:16
Brother, help us to go out into the world and do that.
30:16-30:17
Help us to do that to one another.
30:17-30:19
Help us to be the church that You want us to be.
30:20-30:23
Help us to be the Christians that You want us to be.
30:23-30:32
Help us to be the family members You want us to be.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):

As we see in the Biblical examples of Nadab and Abihu, Achan, Uzzah, Ananias and Sapphira, disobedience brought tragic, physical death. Does God's Word say there is something worse? If so, what?
Warfare is constant on a spiritual level, even to Christians. We try to be obedient to God, but fail quite often and sin. What truths do you find in the Bible give us hope when we sin?

Breakout Questions:

Give one example of an act of disobedience that caused wounds in your life. Have those wounds healed, even partially? If yes, share some details around how they were healed. If no, God has the power to heal. Go to Him right now and lift up any hurting brother or sister in prayer.

Mark Ort

April 26, 2015

Guest Speaker

Controlling the Fire: Honoring God with our Speech

Mark Ort

April 26, 2015

Guest Speaker

Some Types of Sinful Speech:

BOASTING

COMPLAINING

SLANDER (GOSSIP/BACKBITING)

PROFANITY

CARELESS WORDS / EMPTY CHATTER

LYING

Truths from the text to help control the fire:

We are ACCOUNTABLE for how we use our TONGUE. (Titus 3:1-2)

Control the TONGUE, control the BODY. (Titus 3:2-5)

Recognize that the TONGUE DEFILES us. (Titus 3:6)

Our TONGUE can be used for GOOD and EVIL . (Titus 3:9-10)

We are POWERLESS to tame the TONGUE without Christ. (Titus 3:7-8)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
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00:00-00:04
We're going to be in James Chapter 3, so if you want to go ahead and turn there.
00:07-00:14
Most of you know that I do prison ministry, and my wife, Kristen, does that along with me.
00:14-00:16
She's over in the women's plot, of course.
00:16-00:18
It's the Butler County Prison.
00:19-00:25
I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes telling you guys and giving you an update about what we do.
00:27-00:29
Maybe you're wondering a little bit about what happens in the prisons.
00:31-00:33
It's a pretty amazing ministry, actually.
00:33-00:37
We go in through a group called Pressing On Ministries.
00:37-00:39
It's a ministry in Butler.
00:40-00:41
A good friend of mine heads it up.
00:42-00:51
It deals with addiction issues, drug addiction and alcohol addiction, and any kind of addiction that somebody may have.
00:51-00:55
They provide biblical answers for the men and women who come to that.
00:56-00:59
involved in the prison, the Butler County prison.
00:59-01:07
And so we go in on most Friday nights and deliver the gospel to the men and women at the jail.
01:08-01:10
And it's kind of interesting.
01:11-01:17
Kristen goes in the women's pod and I'll be in the men's pod and we're literally 10 feet apart.
01:17-01:29
There's a hallway and the two pods when you go in, when you weave your way around through the doors and enter into the rooms that you're in, our respective rooms are across the hall from each other.
01:29-01:31
We're literally 10 feet apart.
01:31-01:38
So it's kind of neat to know that my wife is right across the hall from me, given the good news to the women.
01:40-01:45
And at first, I never would have dreamed that I would do prison ministry 20 years ago.
01:46-01:48
And that's actually how I met Jeff Miller.
01:49-01:52
And Jeff and his wife and their kids are on vacation today.
01:52-01:52
They're in Florida.
01:53-01:56
We've been praying for their vacation and for their safety and everything.
01:57-01:58
But that's how we met.
01:59-02:12
And at the prison, I always thought that these guys were just like dirtbags and scum of the earth and things like that.
02:12-02:16
And in many cases, they have done some really horrible things.
02:16-02:30
But when I look at them, when I go in every Friday, when I see them and I've gotten to know some of these guys, they're not a whole lot different than you and I.
02:30-02:39
In fact, they need Jesus just like you do, and you need Jesus just like they do.
02:40-02:45
And so as I look around the room, we get 8, 10, 12 guys in there.
02:45-02:50
Kristen gets 2 or 3, 5, maybe 6 ladies that come.
02:52-02:56
I don't look at them necessarily as criminals now.
02:57-03:04
These are like dads and husbands and people who have hurts and needs and fears.
03:05-03:09
And they have victories and wins and stuff like that.
03:10-03:17
And when I look at them, they've become, the regulars have kind of become my friend.
03:18-03:19
They're my friends.
03:19-03:25
When I miss a Friday night, I miss this past Friday, they are disappointed.
03:25-03:26
"Mark, where were you last week?
03:27-03:34
We missed you." Many of you have been involved in that prison ministry by praying, giving Bibles.
03:36-03:42
We're allowed to have paperback Bibles in there, and so we deliver the MacArthur Study Bible.
03:42-03:43
They all want the MacArthur Study Bible.
03:44-03:53
So for me, I look around and all the guys in my Bible study have MacArthur Study Bibles, and they have little sticky notes in there and things in there.
03:53-03:56
They're very excited to learn from the Word of God.
03:57-04:02
What we do in there is not much different than what we do here today.
04:03-04:05
We sing a couple of songs maybe.
04:06-04:12
A couple of weeks ago, we sang "The Old Rugged Cross." One of the guys who led it has a really deep, booming voice.
04:13-04:14
He's now out of jail.
04:16-04:22
We sang that song, and it was kind of humorous because they don't care about the notes.
04:23-04:26
They don't care if they're not singing the tune it's supposed to be.
04:26-04:27
They just sing it.
04:27-04:32
And it's pretty neat to hear the different variations of the songs that they'll sing.
04:33-04:35
And then we take prayer requests.
04:35-04:36
They love their prayer request time.
04:36-04:38
And we'll spend 45 minutes doing prayer.
04:39-04:40
And they love that.
04:40-04:49
They have so many needs and their cases and their families and just the things that go on in their plot and stuff.
04:49-04:51
A lot of different requests.
04:52-04:54
And then we study the Word.
04:55-04:59
We open up the Bible and we teach them something from the Word.
05:00-05:08
And it generally always goes toward the Gospel because I know there's people sitting there who don't know the Gospel.
05:09-05:11
So we clarify the Gospel.
05:11-05:22
That's our job as Christians really is to make the Gospel clear to people so that they understand their condition and understand what they need to do in their life to Jesus Christ.
05:24-05:29
I share with them a Bible study, something usually that I'm studying.
05:30-05:41
And a few weeks ago, I shared a message with them about how they can control their tongue, how they can honor God with their speech.
05:41-05:51
And since I did that, I kind of worked on it a little bit and made it suitable for a Sunday morning message.
05:51-05:53
And I wanted to bring that to you this morning.
05:53-06:01
So if you open up your copy of the scriptures to James chapter three, we're gonna look at verses one through 12.
06:03-06:15
If you would just imagine with me a scenario where you get up in the morning and you decide you're going to take a road trip and you're gonna take your dog with you.
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I don't know if you have dogs, if some of you have dogs, maybe you have a cat, but just imagine you have a dog.
06:20-06:26
We have a dog, his name's Reggie, and he is the cutest little thing ever.
06:27-06:27
Right, Libby?
06:28-06:30
He's a cute dog.
06:31-06:46
But just imagine you get up in the morning and you're getting ready to go, and your dog goes over and he's eating his food, and he looks up at you and he says, "This is the best food I've ever had. I love this food.
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You take such good care of me, and you give me this really good stuff.
06:50-06:52
I mean, I could eat this stuff every day.
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It's so good.
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You're happy that your dog is appreciative.
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You hop in the car, and the dog goes with you.
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Niagara Falls, I guess, is like 90 miles away.
07:05-07:06
We're going to Niagara Falls.
07:06-07:09
On the way there, we have some time to communicate.
07:09-07:10
There's some time to talk.
07:11-07:15
The dog, he just says, "I just love you so much.
07:17-07:18
"You're like the best.
07:19-07:20
"I love spending time with you.
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"We're having a great time." You have this conversation the whole way to Niagara Falls.
07:26-07:35
And you get to Niagara Falls and jump out of the car and you walk over, I don't know how many of you have ever been to Niagara Falls, but I love Niagara Falls.
07:35-07:37
It's like the best.
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I love that kind of thing in nature.
07:40-07:47
So the dog gets out and he runs over and he looks over the precipice and he says, "This is totally awesome.
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I love this.
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This is so beautiful.
07:49-07:51
I've never seen anything like this in my life.
07:52-07:59
Best road trip ever for me." You look at that and that's kind of like a far-fetched story.
08:00-08:02
I mean, we can use our imagination.
08:02-08:03
It's kind of out there.
08:03-08:04
Dogs don't talk.
08:06-08:10
Think about this gift of communication that God has given us.
08:11-08:20
Nowhere in God's creation has he given any of his creatures that kind of ability.
08:21-08:25
Your dog has never told you how good the food is that you give them.
08:28-08:31
They don't verbalize beauty.
08:32-08:41
They don't stand at the precipice of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon and say, "Man, this is really pretty." They're just worried about where their next dog treat's coming from, right?
08:42-08:47
For us to have the gift of communication like we do, I mean, we can express our love to one another.
08:48-08:49
We can encourage one another.
08:50-08:52
We talk about our fears with one another, our worries.
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We talk about how we pray for one another, things that make us sad.
08:58-09:03
We can express extreme happiness and exclamations and things like that.
09:05-09:08
Words really define who we are, don't they?
09:10-09:11
They define who we are.
09:11-09:16
The things we choose to say tells the world what kind of person we are.
09:18-09:22
And it really tells the world who we belong to.
09:23-09:29
Unfortunately, we live in a culture that's increasingly careless with its words.
09:30-09:42
Language that was once considered distasteful or foul or vulgar, those kinds of things have become commonplace in everyday life and everyday talk.
09:43-09:46
Christians sometimes haven't been able to control themselves.
09:47-09:53
They've not been able to exercise self-control when they've expressed themselves.
09:53-09:59
And you might ask yourself, "What difference does it make?" Or what's on your bulletin cover?
09:59-10:01
Does God really care how I speak?
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Does He care about that kind of thing?
10:05-10:19
So as we look at James chapter 3, I want to look at James chapter 3, and I tell the guys that had jailed us all the time, that when we come to God's Word, it's not this kind of psychological mumbo-jumbo stuff.
10:20-10:22
This is not a self-help book.
10:23-10:34
Certainly you can get some help from it, but I'm not going to the jail or I'm not coming here to talk to you guys about how you can help yourself.
10:36-10:39
It's not a self-help seminar is what I'm saying.
10:40-10:44
The presentation of God's Word is not to make us feel good.
10:45-10:52
The presentation of God's Word, the intent, is that we might know God and bring Him honor.
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That's what I wanted to do today.
10:55-11:03
So when we come to James 3, let's not come to it with the expectation that this chapter is going to help me clean up my speech.
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Let's look at it as this chapter is going to show me how to honor God in my speech.
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So let's take a look at James 3.
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It says, "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we shall incur a stricter judgment.
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For we all stumble in many ways.
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If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well." Now, if we put bits into the horse's mouth so that they may obey us, we direct their entire body as well.
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Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder, wherever the inclination of the pilot desires.
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So also, the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.
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Behold, how great a force is set aflame by such a small fire.
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And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity.
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The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.
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Every species of birds, I'm sorry, for every species of beasts and birds and reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by the human race, but no one can tame the tongue.
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It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
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With it, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God.
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From it, from the same mouth, come both blessing and cursing.
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My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.
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Does a fountain send out from the same opening, both fresh and bitter water?
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"In a fig tree, my brother, I produce olives, or a vine, I produce figs.
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Neither salt water can produce fresh." Before we go through the passage, there were some points that I wanted to make about the passage, but I wanted to look at some kind of speech.
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This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch, but just a couple of kinds of sinful speeches that we may find ourselves engaging in.
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The first one I think you have on your outline is going to be boasting.
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I think we know what boasting is.
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The dictionary defined boasting as something like excessive pride and self-satisfaction about one's achievements, possessions, abilities.
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This is bragging.
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It's gloating.
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It's verbalized self-admiration.
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Listen to what God's Word says about boasting in Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24.
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justice and righteousness on earth.
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Ride the light in these things declares the Lord.
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The word boast in this passage in the Hebrew I'm never going to be accused of being a Hebrew scholar. I've never studied Hebrew. I've never studied Greek. But I do have tools at home and there are valuable tools that you guys can use to look things up.
14:46-15:48
There's some caution in that that of course but boast in this passage is actually the Hebrew Hebrew word hello h-a-l-e-l hello means extravagant praise glorious and lofty like we're just saying that song glorious it's like hello hallelujah that's where that's where that word comes from hallelujah it's combining the word hello the praise with the word "Yah" short for Yahweh. It literally means "praise to Yahweh." Hallelujah. This word is translated into English several times in the book of Revelation. It's ascribing praise and glory and adoration to God, the Lord Almighty. So when we boast about something, when we boast about ourselves, We're really saying, "Hallelujah to me." We're pompously overestimating ourselves.
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We're puffing out our spiritual chest and we're saying, "Look how great I am." When we use boastful words, what we're really doing, we're robbing God of the glory and praise that He alone is worthy of.
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pretty dangerous because listen to what Psalm 5 5 says the boastful not shall not stand before your eyes you hate all who do iniquity this this is kind of a self-explanatory verse it condemns the prideful person the person who exalts himself God is not particularly interested in people who find their confidence in themselves. We are woefully inadequate in our own power.
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And if we were honest with ourselves, I think we would say that we're really weak and frail and needy. We really don't have anything to brag about.
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So does God really care if I boast?
16:48-16:57
What about complaining? That's the next one on your list. Complaining is pretty simple.
16:57-17:02
If we're honest with ourselves, we can admit what complaining is.
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It's just verbalizing our ungratefulness about a circumstance that we're in.
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I mean, if you think about complaining, it's pretty, it's a, if I could use the word putrid, aroma, to the people around you.
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Who wants to be around a complainer?
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If somebody, If somebody's coming to me and complaining, I gotta be honest with you, you kinda lose me after about the first three words.
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Seriously, I wanna hear what you have to say, and there's room for discussion about things, but if you start complaining, you sound like Charlie Brown's teacher to me.
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(audience laughs) You know what that sounds like?
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I just hear blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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So if that's like that to me, What about God?
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What's he hearing when we're complaining?
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it is a Displeasing aroma to God when we complain If our discussion involves Grumbling and complaining if you hear me complaining, would you please lovingly confront me?
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And say hey, you know Complaining is not what we're supposed to do as Christians.
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So does God really care if I complain?
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Does he care if I boast?
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Does he care if I complain?
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The next one is slander.
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What about slander?
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That's kind of like gossip or backbiting.
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Our court systems are full of cases dealing with defamation lawsuits.
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It's making false accusations about somebody.
18:52-19:01
It's accusations that are represented as fact, with the ultimate end being damage and harm done to someone else's reputation.
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That might include things like shaming somebody, ridicule.
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Guys that are in school, do you engage in ridicule at your school?
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That would be slander if you're ridiculing somebody.
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Scorning, gossiping, backbiting, anything that's malicious with an intent to harm somebody reputation. It's a vicious form of communication that a Christian ought not to be involved in. In the fourth chapter of Matthew, when the devil led Jesus up to be tempted, that word for the devil in there is the word "slanderer." You know, the devil's called a lot of things in the Scriptures. He's called the deceiver, the enemy, the murderer, the adversary. But in this account, in chapter 4 of Matthew, he's referred to as a slanderer. He's making false accusations. He wants to ruin the reputation of Jesus by throwing temptations in his path, hoping that Jesus will succumb to that. So for us to engage in slanderous type of communication, not only have we been fooled by the devil, we become implicit.
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We're working with him.
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Jesus, when speaking to his disciples in John 6, 68, he said, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" He was speaking of Judas Iscariot, who was going to betray him for a few coins.
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If we feel as though we must ruin someone's reputation through our malicious words, then clearly we're doing the work of the enemy.
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Would what Jesus turn to us when we're slandering In our viciousness and call us a devil Does Jesus really care if I slander God really care if I slander What about this one on your outline profanity You can use several words interchangeably with that vulgarity adversity I I was looking up on Google profanity and it literally means not admitted into the temple.
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That's what the word profanity means.
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Perversity is twisted, distorted, crooked, deceitful, false.
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Twisted and crooked words that fly from our lips, they reveal something about us, don't they?
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There's something sinister in our heart that is being revealed with our crooked speech or perversity.
21:35-22:01
speech begins with perverse heart. I don't know if you knew this or not, but your tongue is connected to your heart. Out of the mouth, let me start that again, for the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart, from Matthew 12. And in Proverbs 11, it says the perverse in heart are an abomination to the Lord. Do you get that logical connection there?
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You're speaking something that's coming from your heart, and God's saying, "I'm looking at you like this is an abomination." We really have to watch our words.
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God takes our language very seriously.
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I want you to think about these two verses.
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Write these verses down.
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Ephesians 5, 3, 4, and 5.
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I thought this was pretty neat.
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Ephesians 5.3 says this, "Immorality or any impurity or greed must not be named among you as is proper among the saints." Now, if you skip to verse 5, he says, "For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God." two verses stand as prominent bookends around another verse. And look what the verse in the middle says. "There must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting, but rather the giving of thanks." I couldn't help but be amazed when I looked at that, how that connected, where you have a verse in the middle of two other verses talking about immorality and impurity, talking about your tongue, but these verses are talking about, it's plain what they're talking about, it's who is a participant and who is not a participant in the kingdom of God. The way we speak, that's sandwiched in between two verses that talk about that.
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Church, we need to find out what words are profane and stop using them.
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How do we know what are profane words?
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I'm going to give you a couple of hints.
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We can distill them down to a couple of categories.
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Profane words are those which are associated with ungodly sexual filth.
24:19-24:22
There are also words that express anger.
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We have ungodly sexual filth, words that express anger.
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Some profanity is an ill attempt at trying to tell a joke or expressing humor.
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And other profane words are directly irreverent to God.
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Let me give you a little bit more help here.
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The proper context of this phrase, "Oh my God," David wrote "Oh my God" a bunch of times in the book of Psalms.
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Let me just read one to you.
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"Deliver me from my enemies, oh my God.
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Set me securely on high, away from those who rise up against me." This is David in Psalm 59, not using the name of the Lord flippantly or in vain.
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Here's one. How about the proper context of the word "hell"?
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"If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, for it is better for you to enter life crippled than to have your two hands, to go into hell, the unquenchable fire, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
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This is Jesus in Mark 9, He's describing the horribleness of hell.
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How do we use the word hell?
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Do we use it carelessly?
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Is hell in our vocabulary when talking about things other than the torturous place of punishment for those who reject Christ?
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If so, that's profane.
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What about the word damned?
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What's the proper context of the word damned?
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This is from the King James.
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He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.
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It's in Mark 16, 16.
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Your translation might use the word condemned or judged.
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This is the highest form of condemnation that we as sinful people don't have the right to make.
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in my view.
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We just have to be careful.
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I'm not going to go through a list of all the profane words.
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I'll ask you again, does God care if I use profanity?
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We have boasting, we have complaining, we have slander, profanity.
26:55-26:58
What about careless words or empty chatter?
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Careless words or empty chatter.
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This is a discussion of vain and useless matters.
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I think of-- well, King James Version says, "vain babblings." Babbling, that's empty chatter.
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I think of things like Hollywood, or sitcoms, or getting involved in endless political debates.
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I mean, there's room for discussion and things.
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But this is fruitless talk that has no spiritual usefulness.
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They're unholy words that have no substance.
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They're lacking solid worth.
27:47-28:01
If I were to get up here and talk to you and tell you jokes and make you laugh, and if you go away from here and think, I got no spiritual nourishment this morning, then that's an epic fail.
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That's empty chatter.
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I am chattering up here if I'm not giving you something that's useful and fruitful.
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Here's some examples on that.
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I mean, you know, things that are, we're trying to win an argument, I guess.
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Things that are well-established in Scripture and we're still arguing about them.
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Does a day in chapter one of Genesis really mean a day?
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I mean, people debate about that all the time.
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I think the Bible's pretty clear about that.
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Can we discuss?
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Yes, we should discuss.
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Should we babble about it?
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No, that's empty chatter.
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You know, I mentioned the King James Scriptures.
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I love the King James Bible.
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I don't use the King James.
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I use the New American Standard.
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I know some of you folks use the ESV, NIV.
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There's a lot of six or seven really reliable translations.
28:57-29:02
Getting involved in a King James-only debate is fruitless.
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Disgust? Yes.
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Babble, empty chatter?
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Not good.
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Droning on in careless, empty, thoughtless words is bad.
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It's a doorway to other sins.
29:17-29:26
2 Timothy 2:16 says that worldly and empty chatter leads to something. It leads to further ungodliness, and it spreads like gangrene.
29:29-30:03
There's no words we need to be careful we need to assemble our words and our phrases our sentences in such a way that are valuable to somebody that are fruitful and it's a duty of the Christian we must embrace that what about lying God disdains lying so much that he he made it as one of his 10 Commandments. We talked about slander and that's slander is a form of lying.
30:06-30:22
This is a little more broad. It's an outright, bold-faced falsehood. It could be a half-truth, a half-lie, a white lie, deception. Anything short of the truth is a lie.
30:23-30:26
Lies are abominable to God.
30:27-30:31
If we aren't telling the truth, what does that make us?
30:32-30:33
What does that make us?
30:34-30:34
A liar.
30:34-30:34
A liar.
30:35-30:38
If we kill somebody, we're a murderer, right?
30:38-30:40
If we steal something, we're a thief.
30:41-30:43
If we cheat on our spouse, we're an adulterer.
30:44-30:46
If we lie, that makes us a liar.
30:47-30:49
Proverbs 19 has something to say about this.
30:50-31:17
says, "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who tells lies will perish." That's pretty harsh. Wow. You tell a lie? Do you know why liars perish? Because Satan is a liar. Satan is a father of lies. Christ is the author of truth. Who are we supposed to be like? As Christians, we're supposed to be Christ-like, not Satan-like.
31:17-31:20
We need to stop our lying.
31:20-31:21
We need to stop our deception.
31:21-31:22
Does God care if we lie?
31:25-31:33
So boasting, complaining, slander, profanity, careless words and empty chatter, lying, just a few.
31:33-31:34
There's more, I'm sure.
31:34-31:35
There's abusive speech.
31:35-31:36
There's sarcasm.
31:36-31:38
There's other kinds of things.
31:38-31:44
And this sounds bad, and we're guilty of these things, but the Bible gives us hope.
31:45-31:53
Why don't we look at our passage now, and we're going to get some help in these words to control the fire so we can honor God with our speech.
31:55-32:09
The first thing, if you look in verse 1, it says, "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment." We're accountable for our speech.
32:09-32:22
Now this particular verse is talking about teachers, as in somebody like Pastor Jeff, somebody like me who gets up in front of you, somebody who teaches the Bible in a small group.
32:23-32:31
And if you guys that do small group, Ben, Ben, and Dan, you guys are accountable.
32:32-32:38
Dan with the youth ministry was so encouraged last week with the launch of our youth ministry.
32:38-32:41
I love that Dan and Alicia are putting that together.
32:42-32:44
But they are accountable for the things that they'll teach there.
32:46-32:47
What are we saying?
32:48-32:51
It's a sobering thing to stand up in front of people and teach the Word of God.
32:52-32:56
Standing up here and you're representing God, that makes me nervous.
32:56-33:01
I worry that I'm going to say the wrong thing because I know I'm going to be accountable.
33:02-33:06
Yeah, this is talking about teachers, but the principle's there.
33:06-33:08
The principle is there for everyone.
33:10-33:12
When you go to work, are you not accountable for the things that you say?
33:14-33:17
Are you not accountable for the things that you tell your kids when you teach them things?
33:19-33:20
How about if you get arrested?
33:21-33:25
If you get arrested, they read you your Miranda rights, right?
33:26-33:29
And by the way, if you get arrested and go to Baltimore County Prison, I'll get to see you.
33:31-33:32
They read your rights.
33:32-33:38
Anything you say can and will be used against you, because you're accountable for your words.
33:39-33:40
That's the first one.
33:41-33:42
Understand that we're accountable.
33:43-33:49
The second one, if you control the tongue, you will control the body.
33:50-33:52
The tongue is a very small part of the body.
33:53-33:56
I look some things up here, and we have some doctors in the house.
33:57-34:01
So if I say something wrong, I'm accountable for my words.
34:02-34:14
The average tongue is about 3 and 1/2 inches long, and it weighs about two and a half ounces, that means for somebody like me, that's about 0.08% of my body weight.
34:15-34:26
You have this relatively small member in your body that the scriptures say that it can control your whole body.
34:28-34:39
Various biblical scholars that I've read, I read this more than once this past week, They contend that the tongue is the most rebellious of all body parts.
34:41-34:44
Well, it's a small piece, but it's the most rebellious.
34:46-34:59
So, logic would tell us if you're capable of controlling the most rebellious member of your body, then you should be able to control the less rebellious members a little bit easier.
35:00-35:04
at verse 2 through 5, he says, "We all stumble in many ways.
35:04-35:11
If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man able to bridle the whole body as well." We'll just stop there for a second.
35:12-35:31
I used to look at that verse kind of hypothetically, like, "Oh, yeah, we all stumble in many ways, but if you don't stumble, we all know everybody stumbles, then you're a perfect man able to bridle the whole body as well." I looked at that as, "Well, I can't do anything about this.
35:33-35:34
I'm not a perfect man.
35:34-35:38
I'm not going to be able to pride on my whole body." But I think this passage is saying the opposite.
35:39-35:46
If we tear this verse apart just a little bit, you see the word "stumble." Stumble can be a mistake, be a sin.
35:48-35:49
Look at the word "perfect" here.
35:50-35:55
This is not sinless perfection, but maturity, completeness.
35:56-36:02
And the word "bridal" means to hold in check or restrain or guide.
36:03-36:08
So if we put this verse, verse number 2, in everyday language, it might look something like this.
36:08-36:15
"We all make mistakes and we're going to sin." If anyone does not sin in what he says, then he is mature.
36:16-36:19
And as a result of his maturity, he's able to keep his whole body in check.
36:21-36:34
I think what he's telling us there is that you, in your maturity, In your maturity, you control this small member, you will be able to control the rest of your body.
36:35-36:43
Here's a few verses here of some word pictures of how something so small can control something so big.
36:43-36:45
And I brought a couple of things with me to show you.
36:46-36:48
Some of you have already recognized what these are.
36:48-36:50
This is a horse bit.
36:52-36:54
Something small, it weighs less than a pound.
36:55-36:55
What's a horse weigh?
36:56-36:57
Rachel, what's a horse weigh?
36:58-36:59
About 1,200 pounds?
36:59-36:59
Yeah.
37:00-37:01
Yeah, 1,200 pounds.
37:01-37:03
This can control a 1,200 pound animal.
37:04-37:07
And this is just another bit.
37:08-37:09
Neat little devices here.
37:10-37:15
Something so small can control something so big.
37:16-37:25
If you control your tongue, you'll be amazed at the victories that I think God will give you in controlling your body.
37:25-37:27
That's what the scripture says.
37:27-37:29
He used a couple other word pictures here.
37:29-37:33
He talks about a rudder, small thing on a boat, controls the whole boat.
37:35-37:40
Talks about the tongue in verse five, is a small part of the body and boasts of great things.
37:41-37:44
Behold, how great a forest to set aflame by such a small fire.
37:45-37:45
That's a match.
37:46-37:48
You all have matches in your house.
37:48-37:49
I'm not gonna light it.
37:49-37:50
Probably throw us out of here.
37:51-38:03
And something this little and burn down California, and they're having a drought and everything, you throw this out the window of your car when driving by and you're creating a forest fire.
38:04-38:10
Something small can have, can control the body.
38:10-38:11
And that's what he's saying here.
38:13-38:15
We control the tongue, we control the body.
38:16-38:19
The next thing is recognize that the tongue defiles.
38:20-38:22
We'll spend a lot of time on that.
38:22-38:25
You'll see that in verse six.
38:28-38:28
What's it mean to defile?
38:29-38:32
It means to corrupt, to pollute.
38:33-38:44
You know, if you imagine you're hanging your laundry out, I don't know if many of you hang your laundry outside, but imagine you hang your laundry out like they used to, and your neighbor starts a fire and the smoke comes over, gets on your laundry.
38:45-38:47
It's polluting your laundry, it's defiling it.
38:49-38:51
Or rust on your car.
38:52-38:55
What does the wintertime do with the salt on the road?
38:55-38:56
It's on your car.
38:56-39:00
If you're like me and you only wash your car like once every five years, it's going to rust.
39:02-39:06
We just need to have an acute awareness of the defiling nature of our tongue.
39:06-39:07
Just be aware that it defiles.
39:08-39:14
If we're aware, then that can go a long way in equipping ourselves with the destructive consequences.
39:16-39:19
Fourth thing, our tongue can be used for good and for evil.
39:20-39:24
Your tongue is pretty unique in this regard.
39:24-39:25
Your tongue does two things.
39:25-39:29
It does blessing, and we're skipping down to verses nine and 10 here.
39:30-39:33
We're blessing and we're cursing.
39:34-39:38
We're blessing our Lord and we're cursing men who have been made in the likeness of God.
39:39-39:43
He says, what about a refreshing spring fountain?
39:44-39:47
Does it produce bitter water and fresh water at the same time?
39:48-39:49
It does not.
39:50-39:51
What about fig trees?
39:53-39:56
Fig trees are smart enough to do one thing.
39:57-39:58
They make figs.
39:58-40:00
They don't make anything else.
40:01-40:02
They make figs.
40:02-40:06
They're creating, they're doing what God created them to do.
40:07-40:10
And again, he uses another water example here, saltwater.
40:11-40:16
If you're in the ocean, you can't put a cup in one side of the boat and pull out.
40:17-40:19
Fresh water, and the other side, pull out.
40:20-40:47
salt water. It's all salt water. It's our mouth, likewise our mouth. He says, "From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing, my brethren, these things ought not to be this way." And number five, we are powerless to tame the tongue without Christ. It says in verse eight, "No one can tame the tongue." No No one can tame the tongue.
40:47-40:50
We are helpless to do this in our own strength.
40:51-40:55
Tame in this passage means to curb or subdue.
40:57-41:01
The verse really says we cannot subdue our tongue.
41:02-41:02
It's wild.
41:04-41:05
And how are we going to bring it into subjection?
41:06-41:07
We can't tame it.
41:08-41:10
We don't need to despair about that.
41:11-41:25
We talked in these other points about things that we need to do, recognizing its use for good and evil and recognizing that it causes pollution and corruption and that we're accountable for our words and things like that.
41:27-41:29
This is the most important one, to recognize we're powerless.
41:31-41:37
If I can remind you of a story that we covered in the Book of Mark, Chapter 5.
41:37-41:38
You don't need to turn there.
41:39-41:42
But remember when we talked about the Gerasene Demoniac?
41:44-41:48
Now, I'm not comparing the use of our tongue to a demon.
41:49-41:51
That's not the comparison I'm making here.
41:52-41:56
If you're using foul language, I'm not saying you're demon possessed.
41:56-41:58
I want you to get the comparison.
41:59-42:09
The passage is talking about, here's a man that he had demons, And he was absolutely powerless to do anything about it.
42:09-42:22
In verse 4 of that passage, it says, "No one was able to subdue him." An interesting connection between James 3/8 and Mark 5/4.
42:24-42:37
It says, "No one was able to subdue that guy." It's the exact same word that says, "No one contained the tongue." Now was that guy left out all alone and out on a limb?
42:38-42:38
No.
42:39-42:45
We go on in that passage, and we see that the demoniac encountered the one who could tame him.
42:47-42:47
Who was it?
42:49-42:50
It's not a Pat Sunday School answer.
42:52-42:53
It was Jesus.
42:53-42:56
You know, that's the answer to every Sunday School question.
42:57-43:02
But in this case, Jesus was the only one that was able to subdue this guy.
43:04-43:13
The subduing, taming power of Jesus Christ made the difference in this man's life by dealing with the issues that he was not capable of doing on his own.
43:15-43:22
The question here isn't really, "Does God care how you speak?" The question is, "Do you care?
43:24-43:27
Do you care how you speak?" God showed he cared.
43:29-43:33
We care by providing you the power to do something about it.
43:34-43:35
Power through the Son, Jesus Christ.
43:37-43:46
We can show that we care by putting into practice some principles that we learned from 2 Peter 1.
43:46-43:52
If you turn in your Bibles to 2 Peter 1, and then we'll be done.
43:54-43:55
2 Peter 1.
43:58-44:08
There's two, this is about God giving us everything pertaining to life and godliness in verse three.
44:09-44:26
He says, "Seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence." And so, as part of our sanctification or our growing, you know, I see that God has a part.
44:27-44:29
He does his part, okay?
44:30-44:31
We have a part.
44:32-44:33
We have a part in that.
44:34-44:36
And that's what I'm gonna read to you next.
44:37-44:39
I call this our responsibility.
44:39-44:47
And a friend of mine once said that our responsibility is our response to God's ability.
44:48-44:54
God already did this, but there are some things that we have to do in our sanctification process.
44:55-45:00
And this helps us in controlling our time so that we give honor to God.
45:01-45:02
What is that responsibility?
45:03-45:06
God did his thing, what do we do?
45:06-45:16
Jump down to verse five, it says, "For this very reason, also applying all diligence in your faith, supply moral excellence.
45:17-45:23
And in your moral excellence, knowledge." Is moral excellence gonna help you in your speech?
45:24-45:28
I hope so, in your knowledge, self-control.
45:30-45:33
One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is self-control.
45:33-45:36
We have to exercise self-control when we're speaking.
45:36-45:39
And in your self-control, perseverance, don't give up.
45:40-45:41
And in your perseverance, godliness.
45:42-45:44
And in your godliness, brotherly kindness.
45:45-45:46
And in your brotherly kindness, love.
45:47-46:02
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, They render you neither useless or unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Is there anybody here who wants to be useless?
46:04-46:05
How about unfruitful?
46:05-46:06
Anybody want to be unfruitful?
46:07-46:16
He says if these qualities are yours and they're increasing, he says you will not be useless or unfruitful.
46:17-46:26
And verse 9 says, "For he who lacks these qualities is blind, or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.
46:27-46:43
Therefore be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you." And listen to this, "For as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble." Do you remember that verse in James 3?
46:45-47:22
2 it says for we all stumble in many ways if anyone does not stumble and what he says he's a perfect man able to bridle his tongue he says if you're practicing these things you are not going to stumble you are not going to do those things does God care about your speech do you Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you and just confess our inadequacies in so many areas.
47:23-47:32
Lord, I know that I have a lot to learn myself and a lot of things to put into practice regarding how I speak.
47:33-47:37
And Lord, as a church, might we grow in that area.
47:37-47:46
I pray God that you would help us, that you would do your work in subduing and taking our tongue.
47:48-47:50
Lord, we know that we're incapable of doing it ourselves.
47:51-47:56
Lord, we, again, don't wanna do this just to help ourselves.
47:58-48:01
We as Christians have a responsibility to honor you.
48:02-48:05
And I pray God that we would honor you in our speech.
48:06-48:09
Thank you for giving us the power to do so through your son.
48:10-48:11
In his name we pray, amen.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read 1 Timothy 3:11 and Titus 3:2

What does it mean to malign someone? Gossip and slander is vicious and damaging. How do you prevent this kind of evil communication from damaging your life and the lives of others?
What is profanity? Does the culture dictate what words we consider profane? What words or phrases should we stop using, and why?
If there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), will Christians really be held accountable for every careless or idle word (Matthew 12:36). How do you reconcile these two passages?
Reviewing 2 Peter 1:3-11, discuss "God's part" and "our part" in controlling the tongue.

Breakout Questions:

Have you been encouraging/exhorting other in their walk with Christ this week? In what circumstances? Pray for one another.

Jeff Miller

April 19, 2015

Guest Speaker

Everyday Evangelism

Jeff Miller

April 19, 2015

Guest Speaker

To be involved in the Kingdom of God, we must do Kingdom work.
To be effective in the Kingdom, we need the proper view of these two things:

COMPASSION - God is all about the heart (Matthew 9:36)

The COMMISSION - God brings purpose in life (Matthew 28:18-20)

- How do we see this lived out in the New Testament Church?
- What can we expect?

Three things that will show up while being at work in the Kingdom:

TENSION

TURNING

TRANSFORMATION

Acts 16
Lydia and the Bible Study
Tension (Acts 16:6)
Turning (Acts 16:14)
Transformation (Acts 16:15)

The Possessed Girl
Tension (Acts 16:16-18a)
Turning (Acts 16:18b)
Transformation (Acts 16:18c-19)

The Jailer
Tension (Acts 16:20-24)
Turning (Acts 16:25-26)
Transformation (Acts 16:26-34)

The Gospel reaches us no matter where we are...

Take home: We will have tension, when we trust God He will bring a turning and then a transformation.

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

00:01-00:03
Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate you.
00:05-00:32
All right, no pressure now, right? Hey, take your Bible if you would, open it up to the Gospel of Matthew. We'll start there. My heart for us today after the next two hours, just kidding, our 40 minutes, no, just kidding, the next 40 some, 30 some, whatever minutes God has asked us to gather together, we'll spend some time learning about the Word of God and the power that it has in our lives.
00:33-00:40
And I can tell you that I am an example, a byproduct of what the Gospel can do in a life.
00:41-00:47
What I mean by that is, I want you to know that the preacher guide that you see in front of you is not perfect.
00:47-00:48
Isn't that a relief?
00:49-00:54
perfect, sorry, but I have been forgiven by the grace of God.
00:55-01:01
Some of you have walked in here today, maybe this is just a radically different church service than you've ever experienced.
01:01-01:12
You're in a school, you're wondering what in the world are they doing, but I want to tell you that where the Spirit of God is, God's people are, there is a mighty church service.
01:13-01:34
It doesn't matter whether you're in the plains or fields of Africa, or you're in the Dominican Republic or Haiti or wherever God might have you go on a short-term mission trip or you're in this beautiful area of Wexford. How many people dreamed that one day, April 19th 2015, you would be in Wexford, PA? How many people dream that?
01:35-01:52
I don't think any of us did. You have to recognize something this morning. Out of all the places in the whole universe you and I could be, God's called us here today, and he's called us to set aside time to open his word and to allow it to speak deep into our hearts.
01:52-01:55
I can't do that, but God can.
01:56-02:01
He will only do that if you stand with me, would you?
02:02-02:12
As you're standing, that you will begin even with that action to open your heart and begin to let God's word have its perfect place in your life.
02:13-02:14
Matthew 9.
02:16-02:17
Matthew chapter 9.
02:20-02:23
You would follow through this chapter, you would see many different miracles that have happened.
02:24-02:30
We come on the end of the chapter in verse 35, and I think it's key and critical for us.
02:32-02:36
It says, "Then Jesus went about all the cities." Let me just give a disclaimer today.
02:37-02:41
Anybody here have a favorite pair of shoes, favorite t-shirt, dress?
02:41-02:42
I hope not, guys, but dress?
02:43-02:46
I said that and one guy raises, "I'm praying for you.
02:47-02:48
Amen." No, just teasing.
02:48-02:50
But favorite T-shirt, anybody, raise your hand.
02:50-02:51
You have that?
02:51-02:53
Well, that's this Bible for me.
02:54-02:55
I use a New King James.
02:56-02:57
Here's what I want to tell you about translations.
02:58-03:01
Find a solid one and read it cover to cover, okay?
03:02-03:08
But mine might be a little bit different than yours and if you could just give me some grace this morning, I won't preach two hours, I promise.
03:10-03:19
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues, ready for this, preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
03:20-03:23
Preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
03:24-03:27
And healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
03:28-03:34
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with, can you say that with me, compassion.
03:35-03:43
He was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd.
03:43-03:49
Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
03:49-03:58
Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Would you bow your head with me for just a moment?
04:00-04:06
Almighty God, we thank you for this opportunity to open the greatest book in the world, your word.
04:08-04:15
You've told us in your word that the word became flesh, dwelled among us, that we might behold your glory through him.
04:16-04:27
We thank you for Jesus who came, shared what life really is, the meaning of it, to help us understand where we should go, what we should do, how we should be.
04:28-04:29
We love you for it.
04:30-04:40
I ask now, Lord, that the best way that all of us know how, that you'll help us to open our hearts and receive your message directly to us.
04:40-04:45
Not our neighbor, not our friend, directly to us.
04:46-04:56
And I pray all this in the strong and mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, and everyone said, amen.
04:56-04:57
You may be seated.
04:58-05:08
Well, when I first started looking at the New Testament and I came to that expression, the kingdom of God, I really just perked up because I wanted to know who's part of this kingdom?
05:08-05:09
Am I part of this kingdom?
05:09-05:10
Are you part of this kingdom?
05:10-05:22
And I want to tell you this morning that if you have understood and received what the gospel speaks of, testifies of, you are part of the kingdom of God.
05:23-05:27
But I can tell you this, I've grown up in church.
05:27-05:36
Just to give you a little bit of background, my dad's a pastor, my brother's a pastor, my brother-in-law's a pastor, so you don't want to play Bible trivia at our family reunion.
05:37-05:41
That's happened once, and we went undefeated over and over again.
05:43-05:44
But I've been around church all my life.
05:46-05:49
In fact, I was in a car seat on the church bus.
05:50-05:55
My dad did bus ministry back in the 70s, so I've been around church all my life.
05:56-06:03
And I can tell you this morning that there are a lot of people that go to church that aren't part of the church.
06:05-06:06
What do you mean by that, Tom?
06:07-06:08
Well, here's what I mean.
06:10-06:11
See the gospel is clear.
06:11-06:12
It's the good news.
06:12-06:14
When you hear that word gospel, let me unpack it.
06:14-06:34
It's the good news that God loves you and I so much that he sent his son, Jesus Christ, who came and died on the cross for your sins and mine, that we can trust in his action on the cross for the forgiveness, not just for some of our sins, but for every sin that we've committed, that we'll commit, and that we would ever commit.
06:35-06:35
Isn't that great?
06:37-06:48
You see, if you're here this morning and you've walked in, and I don't know what theological background you have or what you look at when you think of God, but you might think that you're a little overwhelmed because you've got to solve everything.
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Let me encourage you today, God never intended for you to solve everything.
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How do you know that?
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Let me ask you a question.
06:57-07:03
Who pushed the button to make the earth spin at perfect axis so we would have gravity today?
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Anybody push that button?
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No.
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You know why?
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God said, "I got that.
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You don't have to worry about it.
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And when it comes to sin in our life, when we place our life under the blood of Christ that was shed for your sins and mine, and we see the redemption that comes, or in other words, the complete forgiveness that God offers, we understand that that is good news.
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Once we have taken that in, man, all you can say is God's got that.
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What an incredible feeling.
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Maybe you're here today and you don't know what that is.
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I would encourage you to linger around afterwards and talk to somebody, myself or anyone.
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I would love to share that truth with you.
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Because you see, if you don't have that truth, you are going to identify with something a little bit later in this passage.
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Notice if you will, as we hasten down here to verse 36, here's what he said, "But when Jesus, when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion." Now it's interesting, when you look at that word in the Greek, that word compassion means that he is stirred so internally that he is moved, that he is groaning.
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I don't know if you've ever been stirred so internally that he is just moved for them.
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He is with them and saying, "Oh, there's problems there." What's the problem?
08:27-08:43
Two things, because they were weary, or your translation might say, "helpless." That's really, if you get into the Greek and you dig into that, probably one of the best ways that you can look at that word is, "They were weary.
08:43-08:43
Why were they weary?
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They were helpless.
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Why were they helpless?
08:45-08:56
Because they kept trying to figure out their pathway to God." Let me tell you, there is all roads will lead to God, but there's only one that has a good outcome.
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You see, you might be thinking, "I'm going to do what I want to do." And God will let you.
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He'll bring people over and over.
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Maybe that's why you're here today.
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Some crazy guy is going to share with you the truth of God's Word, and you're going to be on your own road.
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I want to tell you, the Bible says there's a broad road that leads to destruction, but there's a narrow road that leads to righteousness.
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So I want to ask you a question.
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How easy is it for you right now?
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Is there any conviction of anything that you do?
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If there isn't, you're probably on the wrong road.
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It will lead to God, but if you look at the end of Revelation, God says in this great white throne judgment, there are those that will come to Him and He will say, "Depart from Me.
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I never knew you." You can back up two chapters and see that even people that went to church, why?
09:46-09:47
Because they knew God.
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They talked about God.
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They even thought they did great things in God's name.
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But you know what Jesus said?
09:54-10:05
"Depart from me, because I never knew." And you know what, in the New Testament when you see that "no," 90% of the times that's talking about an intimacy between like a husband and wife.
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We are close.
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I am grateful for my beautiful wife I've been married to for 22 years, going on 23 years.
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Do you know there's times I can complete her sentence?
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It gets me in trouble every once in a while.
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she can complete mine because we're intimate, we know each other?
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Let me ask you a question.
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Do you know God that way?
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Depart from me for I never knew you.
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Stirred with compassion, Jesus said, because they are weary or helpless.
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Maybe you would say this morning, no one's ever explained it to me that way.
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That's why God brought you here.
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Here's the second thing that we find is that they are scattered.
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They were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd.
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Maybe that's you today.
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You don't know the right example.
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You don't know where to begin.
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I want to encourage you, out of all the different things you'll hear me say, may you lock onto this.
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God wants to have a genuine, intimate relationship with you and you don't have to memorize all the Bible to get there.
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All you have to do is say, "Lord, I want that." And start there.
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God will do great things in your life.
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So they were weary, they were scattered, they were wayward.
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Jesus was moved with compassion and then he said the harvest truly is plentiful but the laborers are few.
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And that's what we'll talk about today as the church.
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May I say to you this morning that the first part of having everyday evangelism is something that is part of you in your DNA.
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You've got to have compassion for people.
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got to look at people in a sense like Jesus just did instead of looking at them and saying, "Man, they're weird." Hey, can I ask any...
11:53-11:55
Has anybody here ever saw a weird person?
11:57-11:59
Some of you are like, "I'm looking at them." So am I.
12:00-12:00
No, just kidding.
12:01-12:01
Just kidding.
12:02-12:04
I've seen some weird people in my day.
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I mean, I've been to California.
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Can I get an amen?
12:07-12:08
I've seen some different people.
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I've walked through people.
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I could swear I've seen people that I thought, how in the world are you right there?
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And they probably think the same about me.
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But you know what I've learned a long time ago is that every soul, every person is precious in God's eyes.
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And I wanna look at 'em that way.
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Can I tell you this morning that I always do that?
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No, but I try more and more every single day.
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Now, if we're going to be tuned into compassion, I want to tell you it's going to take conviction.
12:45-12:48
There are times that I'm convicted that I'm not as nice to people.
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Anybody here ever been mean?
12:49-12:50
I've been mean to people.
12:51-12:54
Isn't it interesting how people don't use a turn signal?
12:55-12:56
And that can get me fired up.
12:57-12:58
You ever get fired up with that?
12:59-13:05
You know, I want to tell you there are times I just get my man card out and I just want to go lay hands on them and not for prayer.
13:07-13:08
I mean, not for one ounce of prayer.
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God loves you.
13:12-13:14
Anyway, I'm working on compassion.
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Okay?
13:17-13:22
But with compassion, there has to be a conviction, not just for compassion, but for the Great Commission.
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Take your Bible now, turn all the way back to the end of Matthew to chapter 28.
13:33-13:35
You know what I love about this auditorium?
13:35-13:37
is no clock isn't God good.
13:39-13:40
Now I've been a guest speaker.
13:40-13:41
I don't mind to go a little long.
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What's helped me in times past is people start doing interpretive dance in the back to tell me that it's too long.
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Okay?
13:51-13:52
Just teasing you.
13:52-13:54
Matthew 28 verse 18, here's what Jesus says.
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Think about this.
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You've been hanging out with Jesus for three years.
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You've watched him heal people that no one else could heal.
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By the way, when you look at leprosy, no one had ever healed that.
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Jesus comes on the scene, boom!
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Nothing that could prevent him from doing the work of the Father.
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Blindness, death, mute.
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Bring it on, Jesus could heal it.
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Out of all that time before Jesus ascends into heaven, we get these words.
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I think they're pretty important.
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If you knew this was the last physical words you were going to share with someone for a long time, you would think in your heart, "These are pretty important.
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I think they're pretty important for us then." Verse 18, "Jesus came and spoke to them saying, 'Check it out, some authority.'" That what it says?
14:53-14:54
What's it say?
14:55-14:57
Oh, why?
14:58-15:17
Jesus is saying to his church, you gotta get ready, and there's gonna be times where you're gonna feel that you're outnumbered, overwhelmed, I can't do it, but I want you to rest assured, all authority has been given unto me, in heaven and on earth.
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What does that mean, Pastor Tom?
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That means this, there is nothing that's gonna come at you, seen or unseen that Jesus doesn't have power over.
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Can I tell you a little secret?
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I'm not afraid of Bigfoot. I'm not afraid of ghosts. You know why? I am in the kingdom of Jesus Christ and all authority has been given unto him, seen and unseen, of heaven and of earth, And so I'm not afraid.
15:52-16:13
Now you might say, "Prove it. Let me tell you of a time eight years ago, when I was deep in the heart and recess of a village of Haitians, and I had three witch doctors, all painted in white, with bones through their nose, and shaking bones, and beating drums, and burning incense, and throwing those bones and blood, and chanting and coming at me.
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Now I want to tell you, my interpreter?
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Gone.
16:20-16:26
My other interpreter getting ready to go, I said, "We're going to share the gospel.
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Aren't you afraid of them?" I said, "Listen, greater is He that is in us than He that is in this world." Eighty-two people received Christ in that village that week.
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Amen?
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You don't need to be afraid.
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I'm not afraid.
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You can share whatever story you want, because the only story that matters is Jesus Christ came, died in my place, gave me eternal life, that I might walk with him, not just now, but forever.
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All authority has been given to Jesus Christ on heaven and on earth.
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Now why do I say all that?
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Because the number one reason why you don't share your faith is you are afraid.
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You're afraid of what people will think.
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You're afraid about what people will say.
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You might be afraid you'll never get that favorite pie from the neighbor ever again.
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But let me encourage you, there are things greater than pie, greater than what projection you're trying to give to your neighbor that they already see through anyway that you're different.
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You're not just like them, so go ahead and just say it.
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Can I get an amen on that?
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Don't be afraid.
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Now this is something, we hear this great commission.
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Jesus goes on to say that I want you to go preach, and I want you to teach, and I want train them so they know how, so they know how to observe all that I've commanded.
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That's what I want you to do. I want you to live in such a way that they've got a pattern on how to live. That's what I want you to do.
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And so, how do we do that?
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Well, can we just open our Bibles now to the remainder of our time in Acts chapter 16? It is one of my all-time most favorite chapters in the whole Bible. I Now, I love all the Bible, but there are some things that are just absolutely phenomenal.
18:19-18:19
And this is one of them.
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I love this chapter.
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But for the sake of time, I think we need to explain how we got here.
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Right?
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You alright with that?
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Can we get on the Bible bus for a moment?
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Old Jay Vernon.
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Acts 1.
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Jesus is with all of his disciples.
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He's ascending and he says, "I want you to wait until you receive power.
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when you get this power, I want you to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth.
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Now why did he say that?
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Jerusalem, they knew.
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Judea, they knew.
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Samaria, ah, don't really want to go there.
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Why?
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A little conflict.
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Not sure what people will say about us if we come out of there.
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And to the uttermost parts of the earth.
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So they do that.
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Acts 2.
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They all get together in the upper room.
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They're praying.
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of God falls upon them. Peter goes out and with great courage is going to proclaim this message of Jesus. Now hold up if we go back and look at the Gospels. Peter, the last time he was vocalizing anything about the Lord, it was, "I don't know him." Anybody here ever blow it?
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I know I have.
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And here's what I want you to know. Jesus Christ has power over your mistakes.
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God can take the junk and make it beautiful. Why? Because only God can make something out of nothing. Amen?
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And so Peter gets the courage, he goes out, he's going to preach, he shares the gospel. Thousands, not one, not five, but thousands come to know Jesus as their Savior. And check it Peter gave a real friendly, you know, cotton candy and kisses message.
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Here's what he said, "This Jesus that you killed is the Savior." Now, wouldn't you be excited about that? Like, "Woo! I'm bringing a friend next week." "This Jesus you killed, you murdered, is the Son of God." Thousands of people said, "Huh!" Walked forward, received Him.
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Acts 3, we know that Peter and John, two total opposites.
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If you ever meet my brother Mike, we are totally opposites.
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I'm better looking.
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I'm just kidding.
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Kinda.
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Anyway, no.
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But we're totally opposite.
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Growing up, I liked being out with all my friends.
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My brother in his room, making computer stuff.
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I didn't, that wasn't me.
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My parents had to reiterate over and over again, when the lights come on, street lights, you're to be, anybody else have that curfew?
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That never happened.
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Wait a minute, kids, it happened all the time.
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Always one more time.
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Peter and John going to their customary time to pray.
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There's a man that can't walk, and he says, "Do you have any money?" And just like a typical preacher, they said, "We don't have any money." But I tell you what we got, better than money, here it is.
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He gets up and walks.
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I mean, there's such a dance going on that people are so stirred, they don't know what's happening, and they are ticked off.
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Acts four is the aftermath of that, that they get beat and they are told, don't you dare say this Jesus thing again.
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And you know what they say?
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We've got to obey God rather than you, so go ahead, and they're like, all right, go ahead.
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And they let him out.
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And even in that chapter is where we find some of the greatest prayer, where they come back and share with the church, hey, we just got beat up for Jesus.
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You know what the church did?
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Oh, man.
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I wonder if we're next.
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Oh man.
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No, you know what they said?
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"God, thank you for letting them get beat up for you, and may we get beat up too!" Wow!
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Then we move into Acts chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira.
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They lie in their heart what they're going to give, and two liar liars pants on fire.
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You know what happened?
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They die.
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Now imagine, that is an invitation to your friends to church.
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Come on over.
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though, if you're going to give an offering, don't say you're going to give this and give that because, you find out at the end of the chapter that there are priests even coming to Jesus because of the dedication. People are selling all that they have, giving it to everyone else. See, what you might look at from one sense is why would God allow that to happen with Ananias and Sapphira? Because there were people that were faking it. Let He sent his son to die for you. He doesn't want you to fake it. He wants you to be real.
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Can I, are you with me? So we move on from Acts 5 to Acts 6. Church is growing up. People are complaining. Hey, guess what church? You're going to grow and people are going to complain.
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There are going to be some people that say, I liked it better when we were 12 people.
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Oh man, was it good for you? Anyway, I'll just go right over that. You know, the great thing is I don't have to deal up with anything that I say.
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It's awesome.
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But listen, but let me say this for a moment.
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I've been in church planting.
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I've started with just my family and two dogs.
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And I want to tell you that church changes.
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Why?
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'Cause growing things change.
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When God's hand is on them, there are things about your service now that won't be the same.
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Why?
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'Cause when you grow, it changes.
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I mean, and that's what you want.
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I mean, many of us don't go to Lowe's flat of flowers and say, "I ain't doing anything with it, I'm just gonna throw it out on the porch." And then you'll see the flowers go...
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Eventually, right?
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Why?
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Because they had to be potted, they had to change, they had to grow.
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And your church is gonna change someone, it's gonna grow.
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That's a good thing, it's not bad.
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It's good.
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And so all this is going on, they say, "Let's raise up people that have these things evident in their life." And so they raise up and they have those that are deacons, tachanos, they're there to serve, and then they're gonna build into that eldership and leadership that the church so desperately needs.
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And then we have Stephen.
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Stephen is so in love with Jesus, he's not afraid to share it with anybody.
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He gets pulled away and he gets stoned to death in Acts 7.
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And as he is saying that, he sees Jesus.
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And we see in the peripheral, we see this guy named Saul that is standing there.
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Saul is actually going to be the person that writes the majority of the New Testament.
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And he's here at the death of Stephen.
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Stephen dies.
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And then we have Philip.
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Philip goes to where?
25:01-25:02
Samaria.
25:02-25:03
Why?
25:03-25:07
Because Jesus said in Acts 1, "Go to Jerusalem." Judea, Samaria.
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It took this great disturbance and tension before God's will could really be expressed.
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And so with all this tension then, we have Philip go over here to Samaria.
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People come to Christ.
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In fact, there's a guy there, Simon the sorcerer.
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He's kind of playing games with God.
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He's kind of saying this.
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"Yeah, I want to go.
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I want to be like everyone else.
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I even raised my hand in church service, but my heart is far from God.
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Don't be that guy or that gal.
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Peter comes right to him and says, "Look, I'm going to tell you something.
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You don't have it." I'm going to do time-limit version.
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"You don't have it, but you better get it, because you're going to perish in hell if you don't got it." He walks away.
25:54-26:00
Then we come on to the scene in Acts 9, and here's Paul on his way to go threaten more God knocks him off his high horse.
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Let me tell you something.
26:01-26:04
No matter where you think you might be in life, when you come to crossroads, you know what crossroads are?
26:05-26:06
Everything stinks.
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Or there's big heavy things you don't know the answers to.
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That's God bringing you to a crossroads so that you will see that you've gotta look up.
26:14-26:16
Paul gets kicked off the horse, the only place he can do is what?
26:17-26:17
Look up.
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In fact, there's scales put on his eyes so he can't see.
26:20-26:20
Why?
26:20-26:22
'Cause God is saying, I want you to look up, but not physically.
26:22-26:24
In here I want you to look up.
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And I wanna tell you, there's times that God's gonna bring that in your life.
26:28-26:35
We come to Acts 10, we got Cornelius, and the angel of God comes to Peter while he's up on the tanner's roof.
26:36-26:40
Now, I've got to tell you, there was back in the day when I was in church, I thought that Peter was getting a tan.
26:41-26:43
I said, "The tanner's roof," you know?
26:43-26:44
But that's not what it was.
26:44-26:50
He was, you know, he's like a taxidermist of the day, and if you know anything about Jewish culture, that's probably not the place that Peter should be.
26:52-26:53
But he's hanging out there.
26:53-26:56
Angel comes, says, "Go to Cornelius." He goes to Cornelius' house.
26:56-26:58
He shares what God's laid on his heart.
26:58-27:02
Cornelius says, "Man, that's what we've been looking for." And they move on.
27:03-27:08
Chapter 11 is the aftermath of the council saying, "How could this be?" Chapter 12, we see that Peter's thrown in prison.
27:08-27:09
People are praying.
27:10-27:10
Peter gets released.
27:11-27:14
They're like, "Yes!" But at first, they didn't believe.
27:14-27:16
The girl had to interrupt the prayer meeting.
27:16-27:17
Can you imagine that?
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"Hey, would you just leave us alone?
27:19-27:25
"We're praying that Peter will get out of prison." And she's like, "Yeah, I know, he's at the front door." "Yeah, right, we're praying.
27:26-27:26
Be quiet.
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You know what that reminds me of?
27:29-27:30
You never know what God's gonna do.
27:31-27:35
So don't be so up into yourself that you don't realize that God's on the move.
27:36-27:38
And you know, here's something you've gotta lock down, I've locked down in my heart.
27:39-27:41
God isn't waiting for me to come up with a perfect plan.
27:42-27:43
He's already got it.
27:44-27:49
Sometimes I gotta let my perfect plan die so his perfect plan can have full reign in my life.
27:50-27:50
Amen?
27:53-28:00
Acts 13, we see that Paul and Barnabas or commissioned to go out and be missionaries, first church planters.
28:01-28:05
Check it out, Paul, driven, I mean, focused, Barnabas.
28:06-28:08
His name literally means encourager.
28:09-28:10
Isn't that awesome?
28:11-28:13
Every pastor needs a Barnabas.
28:13-28:14
Would you be his?
28:14-28:15
I encourage you to do that.
28:16-28:17
Take on that cloak.
28:18-28:20
Acts 14, we see that Paul is preaching.
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He gets so wound up, I hope this doesn't happen.
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He gets so wound up, people get so ticked off on him, they drag him out and stone him what they think is to death.
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It's interesting, I've taught this before to other pastors.
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All of those that were following with Paul, watched Paul get stoned to death, they came back to see if he was okay.
28:39-28:44
He got up and said, "Come on, let's go." I've always wondered if Paul didn't say, "Where were you?"
28:44-28:45
(laughs)
28:45-28:45
You know?
28:46-28:47
Thought you were with me.
28:48-28:49
Acts 15, we're almost there.
28:49-28:53
Acts 15, we find that there is some tension brewing.
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Tension between Paul and Mr. Encouragement.
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Barnabas, God's using them in an incredible way and yet there's friction.
29:05-29:11
And it says in the latter part of the chapter that they've got to depart because they just can't come to agreement on taking John Mark with them.
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And so Paul takes Silas, Barnabas takes John Mark.
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Now I want you to know that because if you're gonna be involved in kingdom work, and you're gonna have a conviction about compassion, and you're gonna have a conviction about the Great Commission, there are three things that are definitely coming your way.
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Are you ready for this?
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Number one, these are the three points of the whole message, this is it.
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And this one I love.
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I love taking a little template, and you can run this through the whole gospel, or the whole book of Acts, and this one is throughout the whole book of Acts.
29:45-29:45
You ready?
29:45-29:46
There is tension.
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There will be tension when you share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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There is supposed to be tension.
29:54-29:55
Why?
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Because I want to hold on to me.
29:57-30:00
I want to hold on to what I want.
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And all of a sudden I realize God is saying to me, "You've got to give it to me." There is tension.
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Well, the first part of tension we find in Acts 16 is in verse 6.
30:18-30:20
This is that inward tension.
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Am I doing what I'm supposed to do?
30:25-30:36
Notice, now when they had gone through Phrygia in the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.
30:38-30:38
What?
30:40-30:40
What?
30:41-30:43
They're like, "Lord, I wanna go there.
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"Here's what the Lord said." Great, not now.
30:48-30:50
Can I tell you there's three ways that God answers prayer?
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You ready?
30:53-30:54
Yes.
30:55-30:56
Aren't we all excited about that one?
30:57-30:57
Yes.
30:59-31:00
Not right now.
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And no.
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Now I'm grateful my kids are older, but I can tell you when my kids were younger, the no part wasn't always fun at our home.
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No.
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I'm not gonna say who did that number, but someone literally did.
31:20-31:20
(mumbles)
31:22-31:22
Yeah.
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But if we're honest, there's times we're asking the Lord for something and what are we doing?
31:30-31:31
Yeah.
31:31-31:36
The Lord is saying, "Look, I've got what's best for you." Not right now.
31:37-31:41
You're going to see Asia get the gospel, but not right now.
31:41-31:42
Why is it?
31:42-31:42
I don't know.
31:43-31:44
But there's some tension there.
31:44-31:50
We're just coming off tension between Barnabas and now there's tension that they want to go over here and the Lord says, "No, no, no.
31:50-31:53
I want you to go over here." What a beautiful thing.
31:53-32:01
If you might say, "Well, they just weren't right." Listen, you don't rely on the Holy Spirit like that if your heart isn't in tune with what God is saying for you to do.
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And he said, "I don't want you to go over there, I want you to go over here." Verse 7, you see that the Spirit didn't permit them.
32:10-32:30
I'm going to speed up just a little bit, but there's a vision that comes in verse 9 that a man from Macedonia says, "I want you to come over to Macedonia." Verse 10, "Now after that, he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, including the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.
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That's what they were called to do, to go there.
32:36-32:39
Now, upon going there, here's what happens.
32:39-32:40
A little bit of tension.
32:42-32:43
Paul goes to the marketplace.
32:43-32:46
If you know anything about Paul, Paul would go to where people are.
32:46-32:50
And listen, the greatest place to share evangelism isn't just at church.
32:51-32:52
It's in the marketplace.
32:53-32:55
I want people to know I'm a believer in Christ.
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I want to be able to share with them the good news.
32:59-33:02
Lydia's having a little church service over by the river.
33:02-33:03
Why is she over there by the river?
33:03-33:08
If you know custom, there couldn't be a synagogue till there'd be 10 men that would stand up and say, let's do a synagogue.
33:10-33:13
So there's some ladies gathered together by the river.
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Paul says, hey, I'm sure he's living out the gospel in his life.
33:18-33:20
Lydia says, why don't you come to our little prayer service?
33:21-33:22
They go to the prayer service.
33:22-33:26
Paul's like, "Hmm, I wanna share some stuff." He's waiting on the Lord.
33:26-33:41
Finally, Lydia says, "Hey, Paul, "why don't you share a few things?" Paul shares, if you look at verse six onward, you'll see verse 13, "And on the Sabbath day, "we went out of the city to the riverside "where prayer was customarily made.
33:41-33:43
"We sat down and spoke to the women who met there.
33:43-33:45
"Now, a certain woman named Lydia heard us.
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"She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira "who worshiped God.
33:49-33:58
"The Lord opened her heart to heed the things "spoken by Paul." You see, when there's tension, there's always turning.
34:00-34:05
So when you feel tension in your life, I want you to know that God is up to something and there's gonna be some turning.
34:07-34:09
And then on this turning becomes transformation.
34:10-34:11
You see the next verse?
34:12-34:22
It says, "And when she and her household were baptized, "she begged us saying, 'If you have judged me "'to be faithful to the Lord, or come to my house and stay, so she persuaded us.
34:25-34:26
What happened in her home?
34:27-34:28
Transformation.
34:29-34:32
Because there was a little tension, and then a little turning.
34:33-34:47
Who knows how many years Lydia was praying that God would meet with them and build a synagogue, and yet God said, "Look, I'll do something even better." I want to tell you, there's times God doesn't answer your prayer on the time that you want it, because there's something better.
34:48-34:50
But there's something I've learned walking with God over 40 years.
34:52-34:56
My timing, God's timing, rarely the same.
34:57-34:59
But God is always right on time.
35:00-35:01
He's always right on time.
35:03-35:04
We move to the next scene.
35:04-35:06
So you might think, "Oh, that's great.
35:06-35:15
Look, he's had enough tension going on." They just turn from seeing Lydia's house all redeemed, all changed, everybody different.
35:15-35:16
This is great.
35:17-35:21
out the spiritual piñata, we're going to have a celebration, life is good.
35:21-35:31
We come to the very next verse and here's what it says, "Now it happened as we went to prayer." Can I tell you, prayer is effective and is important in your life.
35:33-35:37
Anybody here ever try to start out a Monday morning in prayer?
35:37-35:38
Just slide your hand up, put it back down.
35:38-35:39
You'll be quick.
35:41-35:49
You know, some of the greatest warfare that's going to happen in your week is going to be Monday morning, because Monday sets the course of the week.
35:50-36:03
Some of the most distracting time, if you're dedicated and you're a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, some of the most distracting moments are going to happen in the morning when you're setting that time aside to pray.
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How do you know that?
36:05-36:06
I have lived it.
36:07-36:11
Where I say, "You know, I'm going to get up at five." It's going to be a holy moment.
36:12-36:14
There will be a holy calm.
36:14-36:15
I will go in.
36:15-36:17
I will open my Bible, I will pray.
36:17-36:20
I'm gonna pray for like 40 minutes nonstop.
36:21-36:30
I will get up, then I physically get up in the morning, I say I'm gonna pray, and then I'll just get ready to do it and I'll say, do I have anything clean that I should do that?
36:30-36:35
Oh, you know what, I'm gonna do that real quick and I'm gonna come back over, no, I can't do that, I've gotta pray.
36:35-36:37
And so then I'll start praying, then I'll think, coffee.
36:38-36:39
Wouldn't coffee be good?
36:40-36:41
I think the Lord would want me to be awake.
36:42-36:43
It's an effervescent drink.
36:44-36:46
I can really do some work for the kingdom.
36:46-36:47
Let me have some coffee.
36:48-36:52
And then I'll drink a little coffee, and the next thing you know, I have seven minutes of prayer.
36:54-36:55
But I had a whole lot of other stuff.
36:55-36:56
You ever lived like that?
36:57-37:00
I wanna tell you, there's tension when you're gonna do the Lord's work.
37:01-37:04
So as they're going to their customary time to pray, people knew they were gonna pray.
37:04-37:05
They knew they were gonna pray.
37:06-37:09
When they're going to their customary time of prayer, the enemy is coming.
37:09-37:11
Can I tell you, the enemy is coming.
37:11-37:14
Let me give you a little example of what I found to help me a little bit.
37:14-37:16
You can write it down, you can throw it away, I don't care.
37:17-37:20
I'm just telling you this is what's helped this little guy right here.
37:21-37:28
I pray at night that God will make the way clear for me in the morning, and that God will give me that kind of heart.
37:29-37:33
And then before I get out of bed, before either foot touches the ground, here's what I pray.
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God, this is your day.
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Let me walk with you in this day.
37:38-37:39
Show me the things I need to see.
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Tell me the things I need to say.
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and help me be what you want me to be.
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And I just get out.
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And I start into the day.
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And I try diligently, and I'll tell you that there are some days that, man, it is awesome when I leave my closet in the morning.
37:56-38:01
And there are some days that I say to myself, how could you disappoint the God of the universe like that?
38:02-38:03
I got to go.
38:04-38:05
I'm just being honest.
38:05-38:06
You mind if I be real?
38:07-38:07
Just being real.
38:08-38:08
There's tension.
38:09-38:11
But I know when there's tension, there's a turning.
38:11-38:16
And I can tell you those days when I beat myself up like that, I'm turning my heart to God the whole way into work.
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And I get into work, I'm shutting the door, and I'm just going to spend at least a few moments because why?
38:20-38:22
I want transformation to happen in my life.
38:24-38:24
There's tension.
38:24-38:28
This demonically possessed woman comes, and she's got the right message.
38:28-38:40
She says, "Here are the guys that are representative of the Lord Most High." Notice, verse 16, "This girl possessed with the spirit of divination met us, who brought her master's much profit by fortune telling.
38:41-38:48
This girl followed Paul and us and cried out saying, "These men are the servants of the Most High God." Hey, is that message correct?
38:51-38:51
Yeah?
38:52-38:52
Right?
38:53-38:59
Not everybody on TV that says they're representing a church is the right messenger.
39:01-39:02
You with me?
39:03-39:05
The radio, now that's a different story, but no, I'm just kidding.
39:08-39:11
What I'm saying to you is you've got to measure them up to the book.
39:12-39:16
Whether on TV or radio, make sure the Bible is lined up with what they're saying.
39:17-39:19
You see, her message was right, but was the messenger right?
39:19-39:20
No!
39:21-39:22
She's got a spirit of divination.
39:24-39:24
She's soothsaying.
39:25-39:28
Back in the day, great money would be made by being a psychic.
39:28-39:30
Anybody here ever seen a sign for a psychic?
39:31-39:31
You ever seen a sign?
39:32-39:33
Every time I see those signs, you know what I do?
39:33-39:34
I laugh.
39:36-39:36
Why?
39:36-39:39
Because if you can tell the future, why do you need a sign?
39:41-40:19
Right, you already know who's gonna come in you don't need a sign to advertise you already do I've had one conversation with a psychic it went very quickly Because I started hammering in on that and the lady got real uncomfortable and she said well, you're just closed off You don't want to believe I said no actually you're closed off and you don't want to believe There's a God that loves you so much He died for you, gave His life for you, that you wouldn't have to worry to try to trick people, but you could have a truthful, honest relationship with the most powerful, the most loving God you could ever imagine in your heart or your mind.
40:23-40:24
She's saying this about Paul and them.
40:25-40:28
If you go into the story, and I don't have time, I don't think, when do we normally stop?
40:29-40:29
One?
40:29-40:30
Good.
40:33-40:39
But when you have this going on, you know, I don't know about you, but I don't like it when people say bad things about me.
40:40-40:41
Do you like that?
40:42-40:42
None of us do.
40:45-40:46
She's saying stuff about them.
40:46-40:50
And you might say, "Well, but she's saying the right stuff." But can you imagine?
40:52-40:56
Here's someone demonically possessed sharing about who God is.
40:57-41:05
And listen, when you are in tune with the kingdom of God, you know why that breaks your heart moves you with compassion? Because you know people could be led astray by this person.
41:06-41:17
Finally, Paul looks at her and says, I'm going to use the Tom Lemmon version, to the demon that's inside of her, "Get out of there.
41:18-41:30
You don't belong there." Let me tell you a little thing about the possession. You see, when I come to know Jesus Christ Jesus is my savior, and I ask him to save me.
41:31-41:33
The Bible makes it very clear, Ephesians 1:13.
41:34-41:36
I am sealed to the day of redemption.
41:36-41:41
I have the possession of who I am belongs to God now, not me.
41:42-41:45
And so I want to tell you, like a young man came into my office about four years ago.
41:46-41:58
He watched a scary movie about demonic possession, and he said, "Pastor Tom, am I okay?" I said, "I don't know." I don't know if you've ever really, truly given your life to Jesus.
41:58-42:03
But I can tell you this, if you have, there's only one that possesses our soul, and that's Him.
42:05-42:06
So you don't have to worry about that.
42:07-42:17
Now what we would know and what we could surmise from this part of the chapter is, this girl brought tension, but then there was a turning, and there's a transformation, because she's changed and different.
42:17-42:29
In fact, those that were her owners were so mad that they got Paul and Silas not just yanked off the street, but beat and thrown into the deepest part of the prison.
42:30-42:30
Why?
42:30-42:33
Because they didn't like the transformation that happened in her life.
42:34-42:35
And let me give you a little news flash.
42:36-42:42
When the gospel comes and resides in your heart and your life, people around you that love darkness, they don't love light.
42:43-42:46
And so they're going to be sometimes, they're a little bit hacked off at you.
42:47-42:48
And do you know why they are?
42:49-42:51
Because you are projecting light.
42:52-42:54
How many people here like to sleep?
42:55-42:56
I like a good sleep.
42:56-42:58
Sleep is not overrated.
42:58-42:58
Can I get an amen?
42:59-43:01
I mean, that was the great thing.
43:01-43:04
When our kids got to about five, it's like, praise God.
43:04-43:06
We can get about six hours at least.
43:07-43:08
I remember when Christian came home.
43:08-43:09
I love you, son.
43:09-43:10
I remember when Christian came home.
43:11-43:16
That poor boy had nights and days mixed up so much, I didn't know if he'd ever interpret what night and day is.
43:17-43:20
I think the first three days, we got an equivalency of four hours of sleep.
43:20-43:26
Let me tell you, Mr. Lemon, who stands in front of you, I'm not so happy when I've only had four hours of sleep in three days.
43:27-43:29
Mrs. Lemon knows, she's great, but I'm not.
43:29-43:30
I like sleep.
43:31-43:36
And one thing I didn't like, my brother used to do, I don't know if you had one of these kind of brothers, I'm just gonna go off on a side trail for a second.
43:37-43:39
My brother used to hide under the bed.
43:41-43:43
And when I would go to get in bed, he'd grab my ankles.
43:44-43:45
Remember what I told you about him?
43:45-43:46
See, I'm much better.
43:48-43:50
Scare me, but I wanna tell you, I prayed a lot.
43:52-44:02
But, you know, one of the other things my brother Mike used to do, he'd like to come in in the morning, sneak in and open the curtains so that the sun would shine in or turn the lights on.
44:03-44:10
And every once in a while, Lord help him, he'd come in with a flashlight and, "Ahh!" See?
44:11-44:11
He needs prayer.
44:12-44:12
Amen?
44:13-44:15
Don't any of you young people get those ideas?
44:15-44:16
All right.
44:16-44:17
But he would do that.
44:18-44:18
You know what I hated?
44:19-44:21
I needed to see the light when I really wanted to be in darkness.
44:22-44:25
And I want to tell you, there's going to be tension when you're living in the light.
44:26-44:28
It's going to be just like that to some people.
44:29-44:30
Hey, can I give you a little news flash?
44:31-44:36
Lost people, unsaved people, are going to act lost.
44:38-44:40
So don't get jacked up about it. They're lost.
44:41-44:46
Instead of getting mad at them, go over and be light to them in a loving way.
44:48-44:49
'cause that's what they need.
44:50-44:52
So they're in prison, Paul and Silas.
44:52-44:53
I'm rounding to the end.
44:54-44:56
Check your clock, seven minutes, I'll be done.
44:57-45:04
They're in prison, and they get beat, and they're locked up, and you know what they're doing?
45:05-45:06
I hate this.
45:07-45:08
It's so hard.
45:10-45:12
No, they're singing.
45:13-45:14
They're singing songs.
45:15-45:15
Why?
45:16-45:17
Because they know the bigger picture.
45:19-45:22
And they're singing so much and they're sharing so much in their song.
45:23-45:29
Now, I gotta believe, Paul's a preacher, I gotta believe there's a little preaching going on intermittently in between the songs.
45:30-45:30
Why?
45:30-45:32
Because there's something incredible that happens.
45:33-45:37
All this tension, they're dragged off, they're flogged, they're put in prison.
45:39-45:50
We come to verse 24 and it says, "Having received such a charge, He put them into the inner prison and fasten their feet in the stocks. And I want to tell you, that isn't comfortable.
45:51-45:59
But when you're doing God's work a lot of times and you're sharing your faith on a daily basis and you're living out the gospel, there are going to be moments that aren't comfortable.
46:01-46:12
But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the prisoners were listening to them. Hey, I want to encourage you, you never know when someone's listening.
46:13-46:22
story, lady that worked for me, back in the day I managed these different stores, lady that worked for me, those guys all knew how to get me off focus.
46:22-46:25
We'd get done at the end of the night, they'd ask me Bible questions.
46:25-46:30
I'd be like, "Oh yeah," and I'd be sharing with them, and then they were all like, "Hey, got to go," and then I'd have to do all their work.
46:32-46:40
I caught on to that after a while, but one time in particular, I was a little irritated about that, but I went on for an hour and a half because they needed to know it.
46:42-46:43
the answer to their questions were.
46:44-46:49
And I remember coming home and my wife would attest I was really tired, I was real frumpy, I was real grumpy.
46:50-46:56
I said, "I don't know why I do that all the time." Two weeks later, a young lady named Chris sent me a letter.
46:57-47:04
She said, "Tom, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you." See, she was moving to go down to live with her grandma.
47:04-47:06
She had a lot of stuff jacked up in her life, I didn't know what it was.
47:08-47:20
But she said, "I think that everyone was asking the questions that I had in my heart, but I was too afraid to ask." She said, "I just want you to know, when I drove down to North Carolina, I gave my life to Jesus Christ.
47:22-47:23
It's because you answered those questions.
47:25-47:26
I'm going to church now.
47:26-47:39
In fact, this Sunday, I'm going to be baptized because I want to share with the whole world what Jesus has done in me." You never know, even in the tense moments.
47:40-47:41
In fact, can I submit this to you?
47:43-47:49
When tension is its greatest in your life, lost people are listening the hardest in your life.
47:50-47:53
Where there's tension, though, there's always turning.
47:54-47:56
And when there's turning, there's transformation.
47:58-48:03
Paul and Silas in the inner sail, you might think there's no way.
48:03-48:06
I mean, listen, they're not on the outer rink where there could be a jailbreak.
48:06-48:07
I mean, they are in.
48:07-48:12
I mean, the only one that can reach them and change the day is God.
48:13-48:15
And listen, you might be here, and that's you.
48:17-48:19
You're down in it.
48:20-48:21
And you're saying, "No one cares.
48:22-48:25
No one knows what I'm going through." God does.
48:27-48:28
You just need to meet with Him.
48:29-48:34
They sing these songs, all of a sudden, the Lord says, "You want distortion?
48:37-48:40
I mean this starts shaking. Maybe there's some drumming going on my brother.
48:42-48:50
I mean All the sudden the gates open. It's such a ruckus that the jailer comes out now. Do you know anything about culture?
48:50-49:18
He's probably a retired general. He's a Gentile man He knows how to keep an eye on prisoners and he comes running in and he says I'm gonna kill myself Why? Because he knew in that day that if any of the prisoners would escape it would be death to him So it would be more honorable for him to take his own life rather than to be executed in front of all That's why he was going to do it You know what he was thinking of?
49:19-49:39
himself You know what Paul and Silas say hey Everybody's precious Nobody's left I know that Jeff's been in prison doing ministry, and I've been in prison doing ministry.
49:40-49:42
Anybody else here doing prison ministry?
49:43-49:44
You know what's crazy?
49:45-49:47
When that door shuts behind you that's like this thick.
49:48-49:49
Am I right, gentlemen?
49:50-49:56
When that shuts, it's like, "Krrr." Can I tell you an even scarier one?
49:57-49:59
I was in prison in the Dominican Republic.
50:01-50:04
And you have to crawl through beds to get back into this room.
50:05-50:08
I have a little feeling of what Paul and Silas were in.
50:10-50:11
No hope except God.
50:13-50:16
The jailer comes out, they say, "Listen, nobody's left." Why?
50:16-50:20
Because through that tension there was turning and there were hearts that were transformed.
50:20-50:44
But I bring all that up about those prisons to tell you I've never met a prisoner, I've never met a prisoner that said, "I love it here. Gosh, I love this prison food. Every day being told what to do. All the stuff we have, I love it. I love it." I want to tell you, the prisons we have today are like a country club compared to the prisons these guys were in.
50:45-50:50
And nobody left. Why? Because God was at work.
50:51-50:52
And they were transformed.
50:54-50:55
In the Philippian jailer, what's he say?
50:56-50:58
"Whatever you guys have, I want that.
51:00-51:14
Sirs, what do I need to do to be saved?" Can I tell you one time I preached in this very chapter, a little bit different outline, a little bit different context, and I was talking about loving those that are in authority over you, and I don't know why, but I just feel like I need to share this today.
51:14-51:18
I wanna encourage you to love those people that are in authority over you.
51:19-51:21
It's by no mistake God put them in your life.
51:22-51:24
I've been a boss, but I've been an employee too.
51:25-51:29
I know sometimes I've been a little sideways that that boss is a knucklehead.
51:30-51:32
But that knucklehead was given for me.
51:33-51:34
And there's reasons for that.
51:35-51:37
And can I tell you this, something I've learned along the way?
51:38-51:45
God puts people in your life to bring character to you that you don't want, but he knows you need.
51:46-51:47
And he'll do that for you.
51:47-51:48
Would you stand?
51:50-51:51
You know what's incredible about this?
51:52-51:54
This is the birth of the church in Philippians.
51:54-51:58
I just want to read one verse in Philippians, Philippians 1.
52:03-52:12
You see, all that happens, all that conflict, all that tension, all that turning, because they weren't ashamed to share the gospel.
52:13-52:15
They weren't ashamed to live the gospel.
52:16-52:18
May I encourage you to do the same, Philippians 1.
52:21-52:37
Verse six, "Being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." Maybe you're here today and you say, I've never really shared the gospel of Jesus Christ.
52:37-52:39
Listen, I know this church will help you learn how to do that.
52:41-52:49
The whole reason why you and I were saved, redeemed, was to go share what God has done in our life with others.
52:50-52:51
You might be afraid this morning.
52:52-52:57
You're in a good place, 'cause only God can give you the strength to do what you're supposed to do.
52:57-52:57
Why?
52:57-53:02
'Cause he's not asking you to do it, he's asking you to allow him to do it through you.
53:03-53:11
And I can tell you, there have been plenty of times where I didn't have to come roll out of the car and say, "Hey, I got the Bible.
53:12-53:13
"You ready?" No.
53:15-53:25
All I did was live my life following Jesus, And I want to tell you, people ask, two things I want to leave you with and then I'm done, I promise.
53:27-53:33
One thing you can do today, if you're going out to eat, let me tell you the number one way I have conversations with people out and about.
53:34-53:48
When my waiter or waitress comes over, I ask them, "Is there something I can pray for you about?" Not always will I get an awesome response, but I can tell you I've helped three people be ushered into the kingdom of God from that very statement.
53:49-53:50
And I pray for them.
53:50-53:50
And you know what?
53:50-53:53
Sometimes you'll have somebody that just says, "No, I'm good.
53:55-54:02
I don't need any prayer." And when they leave, "I pray for them anyway." And I tell that to them.
54:04-54:09
The second thing is, just about everybody here in southwestern PA knows what a catechism is.
54:10-54:18
And in every catechism, it typically starts the same way, that the chief purpose, reason, why we are here, is to glorify God.
54:18-54:26
No matter where someone has picked up bits and pieces of theology, they've probably been to a catechism class at least once in their lifetime.
54:27-54:29
You can start right there.
54:29-54:32
In other words, here's a question I've said many a times at Starbucks.
54:33-54:34
It's a wonder why I don't have a poster.
54:35-54:35
I'm not allowed in some.
54:37-54:43
I've said, "Hey, do you ever do a catechism?" "Yeah." "Do you ever try to figure out?" See what I just did?
54:44-54:45
I'm not preaching at you.
54:46-54:47
I'm talking to you.
54:47-54:48
Why?
54:48-54:51
Because I have compassion that you'll know Jesus as your savior.
54:52-54:53
Try it.
54:53-54:54
I think you'll like it.
54:54-54:54
Let's pray.
54:55-54:58
Jesus, I pray for my friends here.
54:58-55:09
I know you have said that there is nothing in heaven and earth, nothing that we need to be afraid of because you have all authority.
55:10-55:19
I pray for my friends that you will equip them, encourage them, and empower them to to go and be members of your kingdom.
55:20-55:22
May they not be afraid when there's tension.
55:23-55:28
May they look ahead to the turning and may we always celebrate the transformation that happens.
55:30-55:38
And Lord, help that to be alive and well in our hearts and in our lives as we look to glorify you.
55:39-55:43
Draw us close, we pray, in your name, Jesus.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 16

Breakout Questions:

Pray for one another.

Jeff Miller

September 7, 2014

Jesus On Tour, Follow the Leader, Guest Speaker

Let The Children Come: A Lesson On Child-like Faith

Jeff Miller

September 7, 2014

Jesus On Tour, Follow the Leader, Guest Speaker

Jesus and the Children (Mk 10:13-14)

The Joshua Parallel (Mk 10:15)

Child-Like Faith Is:
Not trying to OVER-INTELLECTUALIZE the things of God.

HUMBLING yourself.

Taking God at His WORD.

Jesus Blesses the Children (Mk 10:16)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!

00:00-00:01
Well, it's good to be here.
00:02-00:14
Like Pastor Jeff said, it's been a long time coming, but finally we've arrived at the time where they will put a mic on my head and give me 30 minutes to talk, which is very dangerous.
00:16-00:19
I'm very excited to be continuing our study in the book of Mark today.
00:20-00:26
Today's teaching is going to be from Mark chapter 10, verse 13 through verse 16.
00:27-00:33
And just before we dive in, just to butter you up a little bit, I have a little story of when I was a child.
00:34-00:39
I was two and a half years old, and my mom was trying to get me to stop using diapers.
00:40-00:44
And so she decided that each day I didn't use diapers, she would give me a dollar.
00:45-00:56
And I was like, "Man, a whole dollar, wow." And so I did it, and each day, she'd take me across the street and we'd go and buy a little Hot Wheels car, because they were a dollar.
00:56-00:59
So each day I'd get a new car, so that was awesome.
01:01-01:16
And so one day, after probably three or four days of that, she said to me, "Levi, you know, if you save your money, "you can get an even bigger car." I was like, "Whoa, an even bigger one." And so I decided to save my money.
01:17-01:19
17 days later, I had $17 saved up.
01:20-01:31
We go to Target, and I had that $17 snuck, stuffed into my little Snoopy wallet, carrying it around, ready to go dish out some cash for the nicest car I could find for $17.
01:33-01:36
So we're walking through the store and she's like, Levi, you want me to carry your wallet for you?
01:36-01:37
And I said, no, I want to carry it myself.
01:38-01:39
Maybe not that many words, but.
01:40-01:44
And so she let me carry it myself, even though she thought it might get lost.
01:45-01:50
And so we arrive at the checkout and it's gone.
01:50-01:53
I was like, I don't know where it went.
01:53-01:54
I don't know.
01:55-01:58
And so we go around the whole store looking for it.
01:58-02:01
We check customer service, asking people around in the aisles and stuff.
02:02-02:04
And no one had seen it.
02:04-02:04
We couldn't find it.
02:04-02:05
It was gone.
02:07-02:14
And so we left, as I hung my head in shame, without a car, out to the parking lot, into our real car, probably a van actually.
02:15-02:17
And so we're driving away and I'm crying.
02:17-02:25
I'm saying, "Mommy, can we pray?" And I'm two and a half years old and I wanted to pray and have God help me find my $17 in my Snoopy wallet.
02:25-02:27
That was the most important thing for me at that time.
02:28-02:31
And so she pulled over, we were pulling out of the parking lot, she pulls over, we pray.
02:33-02:36
Turn around, go back into Target, and we find it.
02:38-02:44
And that's not the biggest thing in the world, $17 in a Snoopy wallet, but it was big for me at that time.
02:44-02:52
And I think God used that, even in my life up to this point, as a testimony that faith, he works through faith.
02:53-02:54
He works through my prayer.
02:54-03:01
I don't understand how that happens, but he worked through my prayer and my faith as a child, two and a half years old.
03:03-03:07
And so in the passage we're talking about today, Jesus addresses faith.
03:08-03:09
And he says that it's very crucial.
03:11-03:15
In fact, it determines if we're going to enter the kingdom of God or not.
03:16-03:17
And so let's read the text.
03:18-03:20
Let's dive in and then I'll have a word of prayer and we'll start.
03:21-03:25
So turn to the book of Mark, chapter 10, verse 13.
03:26-03:30
And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them.
03:31-03:35
But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me.
03:36-03:39
Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.
03:40-03:50
Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
03:51-03:52
So let's pray real quick.
03:53-03:58
Dear God, I pray that you bless this portion of your word to us today.
03:58-04:02
I pray that we learn awesome things about you through it.
04:03-04:14
I pray, Lord, that you would speak through me today, help me to not give my own ideas, but to give the ideas that you put in your word and nothing else.
04:16-04:19
Lord, I pray that I'm faithful to the text and faithful to you.
04:20-04:24
And please open people's hearts and minds to receive this great word that you've given to us.
04:24-04:26
In your precious name I pray, amen.
04:27-04:40
All right, so from the top here, verse 13, "And they," stop, they were the parents, "they were bringing children to him that he might touch them.
04:40-04:42
And so the parents were bringing their children to Jesus.
04:43-04:46
And I just wanna talk about that word children there for a moment.
04:47-04:51
The word that Mark uses is a Greek word, and it's paideion.
04:52-04:53
And that word means a younger child.
04:54-04:59
Many study tools and concordances that I looked at said it would be likely around seven years of age or younger.
05:01-05:05
Matthew also uses the word child when he writes a parallel to this event.
05:06-05:15
But Luke, when he writes a third parallel, in Luke chapter 18 verse 15, he uses actually a different word there.
05:16-05:16
I mean child.
05:17-05:20
He uses the word brephos, and it means infants.
05:21-05:22
It could even mean an unborn child.
05:24-05:29
And so Luke writes in verse 15 chapter 18, they were bringing even infants to him.
05:30-05:37
And so this would have included infants, and possibly up to age seven-ish or younger of children.
05:37-05:40
And so just to get that picture in our mind.
05:40-05:43
And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them.
05:44-05:49
So why were the parents so set on Jesus laying his hands on the children?
05:50-05:51
Well, there's all kinds of reasons.
05:51-06:01
One Bible teacher that I listened to explained that it was a custom for the fathers and the elders of the synagogue to lay hands on children's heads and bless them and pray for them.
06:02-06:04
It was a Jewish custom in the day.
06:04-06:06
And so that was probably one of the reasons.
06:06-06:08
Jesus was a rabbi.
06:09-06:12
And so he obviously spent a lot of time in the synagogue.
06:14-06:23
Another reason, and I think a reason that stuck out to me the most after reading through Mark is that there was power in the touch of Jesus.
06:25-06:29
All throughout the Gospel of Mark, there are many, many references to Jesus laying his hands on someone and healing them.
06:30-06:33
And most of the time when he healed someone, He did physically touch them.
06:36-06:52
Actually in chapter 5 there's an event and it's a woman who's following him around and she says, "If I can even touch his garment, I will be made well." And so she goes up behind him and swipes his cloak and he felt power go out of him and heal her.
06:53-06:57
And he said, "Who touched me?" And the disciple said, "What do you mean who touched you?
06:57-07:06
You're in a crowd." And he said, "No, who touched me?" He wanted, of course Jesus knew who touched him, but he wanted her to come forward in faith.
07:08-07:19
And so she came forward and told him, "If I could even touch your garment, I knew I would be made well." And he said, "Your faith has made you well." And so some of these children might have been sick and needed healed.
07:20-07:21
His touch did indeed heal people.
07:22-07:30
Maybe their parents thought that if they had a well child, that if they brought him to Jesus would prevent disease for him to touch them.
07:31-07:38
And so there are many reasons, pick one, pick all the above, but there are all kinds of reasons for him laying his hands on the children.
07:40-07:43
And as they were bringing children to him, the disciples rebuked them.
07:44-07:46
And rebuked is a strong word.
07:48-07:50
Disciples didn't want the kids all up in their business.
07:52-07:55
And so what I picture is Chuck E. Cheese, okay?
07:56-09:41
rugrats running around picking their nose, stealing each other's pizza. And that's how the disciples saw the kids. They saw them as a burden. They said, "We don't want you here. Get out." That was their attitude. I think that at this time Jesus was actually in a house. Now I'm just speculating here, but if you go to verse 10 of chapter 10, it says, "And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter." They were having a teaching time. Jesus was teaching his disciples about divorce. And if you just take out in the ESV there's a break there and with a new sub section or subtitle and that I mean that's not in the original text in the Greek so if you just let it flow they'd still be in the house. And so I think they were probably in the house the parents are barging in bringing their kids to him and they're like we have it we're having a teaching time here can't you see? We're important the children aren't. But Jesus didn't see the children in the same way the disciples did. He didn't see them as a burden, rather he wanted them to come to him. So verse 14, "When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, 'Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.'" That word "indignant," I don't know if I'd ever heard that word more than five times in my entire life before I read this passage, and so I didn't know what it really meant, but it's a very strong word. It packs quite a punch. It means he was angry. He was very angry at the disciples, and he said, "Let the children come. Don't hinder them, because to them and to such belongs the kingdom of God." And here we see a very important thing.
09:41-09:52
We see two sides of God that are shown all through the Scriptures. A righteous anger towards those who are opposing him in his own and love to his children.
09:53-10:50
He wanted those children to come to him. He says, "Do not hinder them." This reminds me actually of a sermon that was given two weeks ago. I encourage you to all go listen to it. It should be up on the website by now, the Harvest website. But in that text it said, "Better for a millstone to be tied around your neck than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble." So Jesus doesn't play around when it comes to his children. In fact, he loves his children so much that he died on a cross for them, taking the punishment for their sins in their place, the wrath of God beating down upon him. And if you're a Christian, he did that for you. And if you're not a Christian today, repent, believe in him for the forgiveness of your sins and that love applies to you as well. We all deserve to go to hell because we've sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
10:51-11:07
I just quoted a scripture there. But Jesus in his kindness and love came down from his throne, lived a perfect life, keeping every single one of God's laws, 613 of them given in the beginning of the Old Testament. He kept every one perfectly so that we wouldn't have to.
11:09-11:22
And he died upon a cross, taking the wrath of God for us, and was buried, rose again on the third day, defeating sin and death once for all, and now he's back on his throne and his message is to come.
11:25-11:25
Like a child.
11:27-11:30
For to such belongs the kingdom of God.
11:31-11:45
To such there means that it wasn't just specific children that were with him that day, rather to all who come to him with faith, helpless, not able to make it to heaven on their own, but needing Jesus.
11:47-12:11
The children couldn't keep the law at that age. They probably didn't know what it was. They might have known what it was, but they wouldn't have been able to keep it. I mean, you were just like, picture again Chuck E. Cheese. It's So we must come to Jesus because he's the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him.
12:11-12:14
And you can't please God unless you have faith.
12:15-12:18
Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6.
12:19-12:22
This is an important one to underline in your Bible.
12:24-12:28
"And without faith it is impossible to please him.
12:28-12:57
For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Romans 4 talks about Abraham being justified by faith, nothing else. The law wasn't even given at the time of Abraham. He didn't even know what it was, but he was justified by his faith and saved by his faith. That's how God still saves people today, by their faith.
12:59-13:24
So going on to verse 15, "Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And so in verse 14, Jesus opens up the kingdom of God to all who are such as his children, as those children, helpless and in need of And here he makes it actually exclusive to that group.
13:24-13:29
If you refuse to humble yourself and have faith like a child, you will not enter the kingdom of God.
13:31-13:32
That's very scary.
13:33-13:34
Very scary.
13:36-13:41
And so at this point, we're probably wondering, do I have childlike faith?
13:42-13:43
How do I get childlike faith?
13:44-14:01
Jesus says it's necessary for us to enter his kingdom. And for this we're gonna hearken back to the Old Testament, the story of Joshua. Back in the book of Numbers, actually, I'm gonna turn there real quick.
14:03-15:20
All right, so back in the book of Numbers we find ourselves in the heart of the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible. And we're at the point where Moses, the leader of the Israelites, sends spies out to scout the promised land, which is the land of Canaan. So Moses sends out 12 spies, one from each of the tribes of Israel, after they were liberated from slavery in Egypt, and after 40 days they return bringing back these humongous fruits. I think they were humongous. The Bible says that he brought back, they brought back these grapes, this vine of grapes that took many people to carry. And so I picture that, not a small vine with small grapes that's just really like a lot of them. I picture it like a scaled version of a grape vine and like huge fruits like this big. That's just what I picture. And they say, "Indeed, the land flowed with milk and honey, but there was a problem. And the problem is that Canaan was occupied by many enemy peoples." And so all the, that 12 of there could focus on were the fact that they probably, they thought, would get overthrown by the enemy peoples in the land.
15:20-15:25
But two people who went to scout out the promised land had faith.
15:26-16:09
Numbers chapter 13, verse 30, "And Caleb quieted the people before the Lord," or I'm sorry, "quieted the people before Moses and said, 'Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we we're able to overcome it. Caleb was one that had faith. The other one that had faith was Joshua. And so when they said this, the people of Israel were like, "You guys are nuts. There's no way we can go into the land. We're just going to get beat up. Let's just go back to Egypt and be enslaved some more. It would be better if we would have died there instead out here. And these people were grumbling against God. They didn't have faith in Him.
16:11-16:16
So God did not allow anyone who grumbled against Him that day to enter the land that He had promised.
16:17-17:18
The only ones He allowed to enter were Caleb and Joshua. Numbers chapter 14, verse 30, this time, "Not one of you will enter the land, I swore with an uplifted hand, to make your home, except Caleb and Joshua. So he limits the ones who inherit the promised land to those who had faith, but not until after they suffered. They were to bear the punishment of the ones who grumbled in the current generation for 40 years in the wilderness, wandering around. I just want to relate that to following Christ. If we enter the kingdom of God, or if we will enter the kingdom of God, that is from following Christ and having faith in Him, but that's not an easy path to life. In fact, life will probably be a lot harder. As we saw in the videos today, bad stuff happens, but with faith in God we will get through those things and it will be well worth it, as we will soon see in our story here.
17:19-18:14
So we're just taking a—there's a lot of stuff that happens in the middle here, lots of laws given and lots of things that happen. We're just going to fast forward to the beginning of the book of Joshua. That's right after, it's two books later in the book of Numbers, so it's the sixth book in the Bible. And so we see that Moses has just died and Joshua assumes the position as the leader of Israel. And Moses, they're about to enter the Promised land, Moses could not enter the promised land. Why could he not enter? Well, that's because God had told him to speak to a rock that water would flow out of it. And Moses at this time is on some sort of power trip, and he decides to hit it twice with his staff instead of doing what God told him to do. Therefore, sort of taking credit for this miracle, and he also takes some credit for other things that had been done in the presence of the Israelites. And so God punishes him for this.
18:15-18:54
just a parallel that I thought of was us taking credit for our own salvation, thinking we can do it on our own. Well, if I'm a good person, I'll go to heaven. No, that's not what the Bible says. Joshua was able to enter the promised land through faith in God. We are able to enter the promised land, heaven, through faith in Christ, the same God. Moses there is a parallel to entering heaven by the law. And I'm not saying Moses didn't go to heaven, I'm saying it's just a parallel. Him not entering the promised land, the law was given through him.
18:56-18:58
That's just a parallel. He obviously went to heaven.
19:01-19:26
But Joshua there, entering the promised land through faith, is a parallel to us entering heaven through faith in Christ. We couldn't enter heaven by the law, not even if we tried, because we all sin and we're dead in sin from the time we come into existence. In fact, Ephesians chapter 2 says by nature we are children of wrath. Romans chapter 5, death came through Adam. We inherit that death.
19:27-19:44
But life comes through Jesus Christ. We have no chance to even be remotely good, and However, through Jesus, we can enter the kingdom of God just as the Israelites entered the promised land through Joshua's faith.
19:45-19:57
Just a side note there, Joshua's name, Moses changed it, it was a little bit different before Moses gave him a new name, and he made it into a divine name, and it's Yeshua, essentially.
19:58-20:01
Joshua, we just pronounce it Joshua, it was really Yeshua.
20:02-20:05
Jesus's name originally was Yeshua.
20:05-20:07
We call him Jesus, we speak English.
20:08-20:09
But his real name was Yeshua.
20:10-20:11
Joshua's name was Yeshua.
20:11-20:13
Joshua entered the promised land.
20:13-20:15
Through Jesus, Yeshua, we enter heaven.
20:16-20:17
It's a great parallel.
20:18-20:19
I'm not just making this stuff up, you see.
20:21-20:22
Jesus is a kind God.
20:23-20:27
As I said before, he died in our place, taking God's wrath for us.
20:28-20:32
We're legally justified if we have faith in him.
20:33-20:36
If you refuse to repent, turn from your sin and apologize.
20:36-20:37
God wants an apology.
20:39-20:48
If you refuse to repent and turn from your sin and embrace him by faith, he will exercise his judgment against you because legally he has to, he's just.
20:48-20:49
He is a just God.
20:51-20:55
And that judgment is a sentencing to hell eternally.
20:56-20:57
That's a big problem.
20:59-21:00
But Christ is a big solution.
21:02-21:06
So receive the kingdom of God by faith in Christ, please, please.
21:08-21:12
So through all of that, I know that was a little bit long, we get a lot of application.
21:14-21:15
So I have three main points.
21:16-21:26
The first one being, and these are all sort of going to come out of that illustration, the first one being, don't, and I'm changing this, you can put it up.
21:26-21:33
That one says, "Not trying to," what childlike faith is, "Not trying to intellectualize the things of God." I want to add a word to that.
21:33-21:40
I want to say, "Not trying to over-intellectualize the things of God." I'll explain what I mean.
21:41-21:43
What do I not mean, first of all?
21:43-21:46
I don't mean that we shouldn't study.
21:47-22:01
All said to Timothy, "Study to show yourself accountable." 1 Peter 3.15 says, "Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you." We need to know things about the Bible.
22:02-22:03
It's a command.
22:05-22:15
What I mean is that we don't have to drive ourselves into the ground trying to over -intellectualize things like creation.
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The Bible says that the earth was created in six days.
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24 hour days, that's what I believe.
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I don't have to come up with some cute explanation of the first chapter of Genesis in order to satisfy my limited finite mind.
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I just believe it because God said it.
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Old Testament stories, there's a talking donkey in the book of Numbers.
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Water flowed out of a rock.
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These things seem impossible.
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the Red Sea parting? I believe it because God said it. And there's plenty of reasons to believe that this stuff actually did happen. There's plenty of evidence. All I'm saying is we don't need to over intellectualize. The Trinity, the Trinity is something that no one can ever grasp even if they tried to. Three separate persons all being God but not being each other. It's still one God but it's three persons, who can grasp that?
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Nobody can grasp it.
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But we just have to believe it because that's what the Bible says.
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We can take comfort in Deuteronomy 29, verse 29, saying the secret things of the Lord are for him, the things revealed to us are for us to know.
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God told us some stuff.
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He can't be confined to the book.
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In fact, the book of John, this isn't in my notes, but the book of John says that the things that Jesus did, even while he was on this earth, could fill all the books in the world.
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So just imagine the things that an infinite God knows.
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We just have to have faith.
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The Israelites, over-intellectualized, when they thought, well, those peoples of Canaan, they're very strong, we're like grasshoppers in their sights.
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They were large people, giants.
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But God had told them that he would drive them out before them, and that they would have victory, They couldn't wrap their brain around that.
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And so they didn't trust him.
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That was a big mistake.
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So first point, don't over-intellectualize the things of God.
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Point number two, humble yourself.
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And these all kind of run together.
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They're kind of all together, not so much separate.
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These three points.
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But we must come to Christ humbly, realizing our need for a Savior.
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First Peter 5.6 says, "Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, he may exalt you." Everybody in Israel thought Joshua was stupid for having faith in God.
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They said, "Are you kidding me?
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Those people are strong out there, especially the other 10 who had seen them." But Joshua had faith.
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Caleb had faith.
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They're the ones who entered the promised land, and if we have faith in Christ, as I've said a million times today, We will enter the kingdom of heaven.
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We just have to believe.
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Point one, don't over-intellectualize the things of God.
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Two, humble yourself.
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Realize that you can't do it on your own.
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Joshua couldn't do it on his own.
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But he had faith in the words of God.
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Point number three, take God at his word.
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God told the Israelites to trust him.
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The ones that did entered the promised land.
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He tells us to trust him too.
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In fact, he makes that faith the deciding factor of our entering his kingdom or not.
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He tells us to trust him.
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If we don't have faith like a child, we're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven.
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So we need to have faith.
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Another thing that I didn't put on the slides because I just thought of it last night was I'm gonna go back to the book of Mark here.
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A little detour.
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Back to the book of Mark, chapter 10.
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This is all from verse 15.
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It says, "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God "like a child," what do children love to receive?
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They love to receive gifts.
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The Bible, specifically what comes to my mind is the book of Romans.
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Paul says over and over, "Salvation is a free gift from God, you can't earn it." It's a free gift, and here he says receive.
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We must receive that gift like a child, excited, thankful.
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Just picture a little giddy kid on Christmas opening his gifts.
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We need to treasure God, treasure Christ.
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He's the prize won for us.
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That's the ultimate source of joy is Christ.
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And if we receive this gift, We are going to heaven with Him for all of eternity.
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How good is that?
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So good.
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So three points.
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Don't over-intellectualize.
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It's just gonna drive you into skepticism.
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Point two, humble yourself, knowing we can't do this on our own.
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Point three, take God at His word.
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He makes promises in the Bible that are great promises.
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And he can't lie.
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We learn that in the Old Testament.
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God can't lie because he is truth.
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That's one of his attributes.
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He's truth.
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He can't lie.
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And so believe him, add his word.
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Receiving the kingdom of God with childlike faith.
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Moving on to verse 16.
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And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
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Again, this shows Jesus' love for the children.
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He did not see them as a burden, and he doesn't see us as a burden.
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Instead, he loved them, and he loves us.
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He loves us, not because of any performance we can give him, but because he does.
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He just loves, that's how he is.
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He is love, another one of his attributes.
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He chooses to love us, not because we're good.
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He loves us so much that he makes us his children through Christ.
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So Jesus blessed the children, laying his hands on them.
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And so really all of the application of this sermon comes from those three points into this question that I just want to leave you with.
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Have you humbled yourself to God's word, believing Him there and having faith like a child?
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If your answer to that question is yes, awesome.
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If your answer is no, I hope you will.
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I hope that we can all humble ourselves, believe God at His word with a childlike faith.
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And just in closing, I think people are probably wrestling with faith here.
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I wrestle with it myself, we all do.
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Jesus was very clear in this passage about how important it is.
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So we must take it very seriously.
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We try to make things a lot more complicated than they are a lot of times.
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Doing things to please God and get into heaven, maybe I check that off my list.
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That's not how God works.
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He works in the way of saving people through their faith in Christ.
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That's the only way.
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It's not that complicated. It's so simple a child can understand, but theologians for thousands of years have wrecked their brain every day trying to figure it out.
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We just have to have a childlike faith.
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It's not that complicated. So I just want to pray.

Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 10:13-16

What is it about children and their faith that make them a prime example for Jesus to use when talking about the type of faith we must have to enter the Kingdom of God?
Why don't adults have the same type of faith that as children do?
What is an area or situation in your life in which you have not had a child-like faith?What attribute(s) of child-like faith can you grow in to improve in this area?

Breakout Questions:
Pray for childlike faith in your group!

Gifted to Serve

Deadly Disobedience

Controlling the Fire: Honoring God with our Speech

Everyday Evangelism

Let The Children Come: A Lesson On Child-like Faith

Upcoming Small Group Questions CLICK HERE

How much of the Bible have we covered since 2011?

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